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Late Saturday night—12:18 a.m. Sunday, to be exact—the Irvine, California, Police Department and Orange County Fire Authority responded to a bad single-car crash at Culver Drive and Deerfield Avenue: a 2019 McLaren 720S had been torn in half and caught fire. Authorities say South OC Cars and Coffee co-founder James Wehr, 27, and a passenger were found dead in the wreckage.
Police are still actively investigating the details of the incident—at this moment it’s not clear who was driving at the moment of impact—but investigators have laid out the sequence: the McLaren was stopped at a red light heading north on Culver, and when the light turned green, the driver accelerated hard, lost control, clipped a curb, and slammed into a tree. The impact split the car in two before it burned. Later Sunday, South OC Cars and Coffee confirmed that one of its founders, James Wehr, was killed in the crash. The other person in the car reportedly was not a public figure, and their identity has not been widely shared.
In footage from the scene, you can clearly see that the vehicle is indeed the McLaren 720S on HRE wheels that Wehr frequently posted on his own IG.
Two Killed In Fiery McLaren Crash, Including South OC Cars and Coffee Founder | Irvine, CA
South OC C&C bills itself as “the world’s largest weekly car show,” and yeah, if you swipe through the meet’s Instagram feed, you’ll see some really impressive hardware on display. Wehr co-founded the show with his father, Simon, and the two ran it together with Simon’s wife, Sarah, “and a group of exceptional volunteers and photographers,” according to its homepage.
A Red Bull F1 car was at the show just a couple of weeks ago. Wehr was well known in the scene, appearing on plenty of automotive podcasts and videos over the years as well as, of course, being a regular fixture at the South OC show itself.
Wehr had a lot of momentum within automotive media. And while people who are into cars will sometimes say nonsense like “if one day the speed kills me, don’t cry because I was smiling,” this is a real tragedy.
There’s been an outpouring of support for Wehr’s family in the Southern California car community, though a lot of the comments I’m seeing under news posts about the incident are depressingly callous. I had never interacted with Wehr personally, but the “play stupid games, win stupid prizes” comments that always pile up under stories like this bum me out so much. Yes, it appears the McLaren was traveling quickly before it wasn’t. But that doesn’t mean anybody deserved to die.
We’ll update this story if more significant details come to light. For now, it simply looks like a deeply unfortunate moment for the car community and a family that was heavily involved in it.
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Automotive journalist since 2013, Andrew primarily coordinates features, sponsored content, and multi-departmental initiatives at The Drive.
