Homo sapiens have been having babies for 300,000 years, but it took us about 299,999 to realise we could reveal our baby’s genders by doing burnouts in family sedans. This is how gender reveal burnouts came to be a thing—and how, subsequently, the act of announcing your unborn fetus’ genitalia can become fraught with disaster.
The premise is kind of cute—neither of the parents-to-be typically know what sex their child is going to be before the big reveal—and the execution is simple—get some custom tyres that produce a certain-coloured smoke, put one foot on the brake and the other on the accelerator, and go hell for leather.
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But a South Australian couple’s gender reveal party hit a fairly significant snag over the weekend when the car unceremoniously burst into flames. Footage from the joyous event—which took place on Sunday in the small town of Meningie, about 150 kilometres south of Adelaide—shows a throng of spectators watching on as the driver of a black Ford Falcon absolutely gives it to the accelerator pedal. Pink, flossy smoke envelops the vehicle as the back wheel spins and a woman off-camera openly weeps. Then the smoke turns black. And then the wheel catches fire.
“Fire! Fire extinguisher in the back of the car!” a man screams as people scramble around the vehicle. “Get back, get back.”
This is the natural conclusion of the gender reveal burnout: coloured smoke turning black, whoops of delight turning to cries of panic, and a Ford Falcon with a burnt-out rear tyre. No one was harmed during the incident, although South Australia Police and locals in Meningie have condemned the event and stressed that it could have easily sparked a bushfire, Seven News reported.
