Most people would put a diamond worth over $200,000(£140,000) in a piece of jewelry, but apparently not ifit's being used as part of a promotion for Ocean'sTwelve.
|Promoters of the 2004 film starring George Clooney and Brad Pittthought it would be clever to place a flawless diamond described as“roughly the size of a button” on the front of a car driven by20-year-old Austrian driver Christian Klien as part of a publicitystunt. Klien was a member of Jaguar's Formula One team and thediamond was embedded in the nose cone of his car. A similar diamondwas placed in the nose cone of a second car driven by MarkWebber.
|The insurers knew this was a bad idea from the start, since noone was willing to insure the diamonds that were on loan fromSteinmetz, an Israeli gem firm.
|To put this into perspective, a certified flawless, VS1 diamondwould be roughly five carats in size, according to Tim Savin, ownerof Hunt Valley Jewelers.
|Formula One cars reach speeds well over 200 mph, so one wouldthink that the diamond, which was set in only a steel ring, wouldhave to be pretty securely fastened to the car for this to work.Apparently it wasn't.
|Klein didn't even make one lap around the course before hecrashed into the guardrail on a hairpin turn. Track safetyregulations at the time forced Team Jaguar to wait two hours beforethey could look for the diamond. When they finally got the car backto the garage, they discovered it was missing that little extra“bling.” Spectators near the area started searching immediately andwhile no one will admit what happened to it, the diamond was neverrecovered.
|Jaguar spokesman Nav Sidhu said, “Someone here has walked awaywith more than a motor racing souvenir.”
|That's an understatement.
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