I'm guessing this was a pretty uncomfortable conversation with the insurance company. Or it will be once he makes it. The owner of a Porsche 918 Spyder, retail value $845,000 (U.S.), saw his car burst into flames and burn pretty much to a crisp at a gas station in Caledon, Ontario, near Toronto, on Sunday evening. Twitter user David Perry, who seems to have been the first to report the incident tweeted, "Just saw my dream car exploded and I've never been so heart broken"
Noone was hurt in the incident. The reported owner of the supercar is none other than Michael Wekerle, CEO and co-founder of Difference Capital Financial Inc. and new dragon on CBC's Dragon's Den. The broadcaster put up a blog post on the Dragon's Den home page with the headline "Michael Wekerle's rare Porsche 918 catches fire, but don't worry, he's okay!" According to multiple media sources, Mr. Wekerle admitted the car in question was indeed his at the Profit Growth Summit in Toronto on Monday, which he was attending as a speaker. CTV News reported that Mr. Wekerle said the car caught fire after he overfilled the gas tank. The Porsche 918 Spyder is extremely rare. Only 918 of them will be made in total (hence the name Porsche 918 Spyder) and only five have been sold in Canada, according to Patrick Saint-Pierre, manager of public relations with Porsche Cars Canada, Ltd.
This incident also invites a weird sense of deja vu. In the summer of 2009, a Ferrari Enzo supercar burst into flames and was incinerated on a road near Kelowna, British Columbia. The owner of that car was Tom Budd, who once worked as an investment banker with GMP Securities. Mr. Wekerle, of course, is the co-founder of GMP Securities and spent much of his career there as a star trader. He left GMP in 2011.
Calls to Mr. Wekerle were not returned.