Woman's newly cleaned car flies onto three at dealer

It's easier to sell a new Acura when there isn't a used Jeep crashed on top of it.

An Ardmore car dealership learned that the hard way Tuesday morning, after a customer leaving an adjacent car wash accelerated into a ramp-like snow embankment several feet high and landed atop three cars in the dealer's lot.

Police and witnesses said the driver, a 74-year-old woman, had just had her white Jeep Grand Cherokee washed at Arrow Car Wash on Lancaster Avenue around 9 a.m. when the car sped into a guardrail, over the embankment, and onto the cars at Piazza Acura of Ardmore.

Images from the Fox29 helicopter show responders standing on top of crushed metal inspecting the Jeep, still gleaming from its fresh wash.

"That's one of the pictures you see on the Internet and say, 'How did you do that?' " said an employee at the car wash who asked that his name not be used.

No one was in the parked cars at the time, and no bystanders were hurt, said John Tucci, patrol sergeant for the Lower Merion Police Department. The woman reported no injuries but was taken to Penn Presbyterian Medical Center in Philadelphia, where she later reported soreness, Tucci said.

Tucci said the woman told police that her car "took off" into the piled-up snow. No drugs or alcohol were involved, he said, and police do not suspect a "mental episode."

Randy Bridegam, general manager of Piazza Acura, said the accident caused about $80,000 in damage to three Acuras, two of which - a new RDX and a 2005 TSX - were most likely totaled.

"It was quite a noise," Bridegam said.

The car wash employee said the woman appeared to have trouble following directions from workers trying to guide her through the wash tunnel just before the crash. He said he did not recognize the woman as a regular customer.

The accident was not the first involving a customer leaving the car wash, the employee said. At least twice in the last two years, customers hit the accelerator instead of the brake on their way out, he said. But he said he had never seen one car end up on top of another.

Tucci did not release the woman's name and said the department would not test the vehicle's mechanics.