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Police to Recreate Prankster’s Flooded Ford to Prove Driving It Is Reckless

Adelaide police have a pretty tough case to crack, if they wish to see popular YouTube Michael Phillippou convicted of driving recklessly (among other things), for a stunt he pulled back in January 2019.
"World's first underwater car" is a flooded Ford Laser in Australia 11 photos
Photo: YouTube / RackaRacka
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Smack in the middle of a heatwave, Michael Phillippou, who runs the RackaRacka YouTube channel with his identical brother Danny, came up with an idea: to create what he called the “world’s first underwater car” as a sure way to survive in the torrid temperatures.

He and his team took a run-down but still functional Ford Laser, stripped it clean on the inside and moved all the controls on the outside. Then, they flooded it with water up to the roof, and Michael got behind the wheel. Both he and his passenger, Jackson O’Doherty, had to wear scuba-diving gear to be able to sit inside the car as it made its way to a nearby store / gas station.

Once there, they came out through the roof, bought a couple of beers, jumped inside to drink them, and were off on the road again, heading back to where they’d started. One year after the video of the stunt was posted online (see it at the bottom of the page), Michael was arrested and charged for driving recklessly or in a dangerous manner, driving without a seatbelt, and driving an unregistered vehicle.

Clearly, the cops weren’t impressed with the fact that the team had been able to perform this car mod and to get the Laser to complete the journey filled with water, without breaking down.

But the same cops will be having a hard time sending Michael behind bars, 7News reports. To get him convicted for driving recklessly, they must first prove that driving this “underwater car” was reckless. So they have undertaken the task of recreating the prank, just to prove its danger potential. They also want to see for themselves how a car filled with water handles turns, how it brakes and brakes, turns and accelerates.

Michael, for one, is terribly amused. Truth be told, he never took the charges too seriously, so there’s no sense in starting now: he’s offered to help the cops, volunteering as the test driver.

“If they want to make an underwater car, we’ve got an underwater car, maybe we can have an underwater race and we’ll see who gets to the bottle shop first,” Philippou told the media after the hearing. “They’re gonna reconstruct the car with taxpayers money. If they do that I’d like to put my hand forward to drive the car, someone needs to test it.”

*Warning:

Please note that the footage below contains graphic language that might be deemed offesive.

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About the author: Elena Gorgan
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Elena has been writing for a living since 2006 and, as a journalist, she has put her double major in English and Spanish to good use. She covers automotive and mobility topics like cars and bicycles, and she always knows the shows worth watching on Netflix and friends.
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