JLR CEO Takes a Tumble In L.A.
Auto-show parties sometimes get out of hand. Most of the shenanigans don’t reach you, the car-buying public, for one reason or another. One major reason is lack of newsworthiness: It’s one thing if a lubricated PR rep confirms some new product that’s supposed to be secret. It’s another if a PR rep sings karaoke poorly.
One thing would make it to the pages of TTAC and maybe a rival site like Jalopnik. The other would not. No matter how bad some PR chief is at warbling “Sweet Caroline.”
Then again, if TMZ is in the house, all bets are off.
The well-known digital gossip rag apparently either was at the Jaguar Land Rover party, featuring famed rapper/musician Wyclef Jean, or TMZ had a well-placed source. I don’t know, I wasn’t there — I was either elsewhere with Nissan or snoozing away in my hotel bed.
Anyway, Mr. Jean apparently hoisted JLR boss Joe Eberhardt on his shoulders and things went … bad. Let’s just say the human tower failed the moose test.
If you’re inclined to see a major car-company head ride a grownup’s shoulders as if he’s a child asking to see over the crowd at a parade, you can click here. If you do, you’ll also see the fall that led Eberhardt to cancel interviews this morning.
Or so I am told — we hadn’t planned to chat with him. But word is the man took the morning, if not the day, off.
Only in L.A.
[Image: Jaguar Land Rover]
Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.
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If you did watch the video, that's a potentially serious fall - head first into a hard surface with your hands held securely behind your back the whole way down. https://www.angio.net/personal/climb/speed.html My rough math at that site says that to roughly replicate this event for yourself, just run your face and shoulders into a brick wall at ~15 mph (I don't run that fast; perhaps you do).
1 - That would seem to be a rather out of date press photo. 2 - Takeoffs and landings are always the most dangerous part. 3 - What a weird incident.
Well, as pilots say, any landing you survive is a good one.
What? No references to "Crash Test Dummies" ?