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Remember the aughts, when underground car culture was having a bit of a moment? It was the decade of The Fast and the Furious, Torque, and Driven… Man, remember Driven? I sure wish I didn’t. I still see that flying manhole cover when I close my eyes at night.
But if Driven was bad, Redline was worse. And not only was it a spectacularly bad piece of cinema, it also had the benefit of being financed by one of the architects of the 2008 financial crisis: Daniel Sadek, the owner of Quick Loan Funding.
Sadek may not be the only Hollywood hopeful to ever lose $18 million making a $26 million movie, but he’s alone in having destroyed both a Porsche Carrera GT and a Ferrari Enzo in the process. Well, technically, it was Eddie Griffin who killed the Enzo, but who’s counting, really? Certainly not anybody writing NINJA loans in the years leading up to the Great Recession.
Redline‘s B-list cast might have made for a fun racing romp had anybody with a clue been in charge, but it’s obvious that was not the case. From the convoluted plot to the lead role written just for Sadek’s girlfriend, it should have set off enough alarm bells to send its production staff running in the other direction. But Sadek’s money was good—at least at first—and his lending business was going gangbusters.
What could go wrong? As it turns out, the answer is “just about everything.”
It wasn’t just the two wrecked supercars that did it (the Carrera GT was crashed during filming; Eddie killed the Enzo at a promotional event), but they certainly didn’t do the already over-budget project any favors.
And lest you think we’re being clickbaity with the whole financial crisis thing, Sadek’s company was holding the paperwork for nearly $4 billion in subprime loans when the bubble burst. He even made Vanity Fair’s list of the 100 to Blame for the 2008 Crisis. Granted, he only came in at #86, but his aggressive pursuit of unqualified loan recipients earned him the moniker “Predator Zero.”
He was so over-leveraged from bankrolling the movie that he was unable to cover the torrent of defaults, and it eventually cost him his business.
If you want the full story, watch our video embedded at the top. It’s quite the ride.
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Byron is a contributing writer and auto reviewer with a keen eye for infrastructure, sales and regulatory stories.