Stunt driving takedown: Instagram reveals car club's expensive antics

Luxury cars hauled away in Ontario Officers laid 12 charges of stunt driving and hauled off luxury vehicles in southern Ontario.

Champagne, car shows, bikini-clad girls and high-speed racing.

That's how members of a high-end Toronto car club spend their time, when they're not being pulled over for stunt driving.

Social media posts show glimpses of the lavish lifestyle enjoyed by members of the North Face Rally car club, the Toronto-based group of sports car enthusiasts who were stopped by police near Barrie, Ont., on Sunday, following reports they were racing up Highway 400 at high speeds. The group had ostensibly been on its way to a gathering at Blue Mountain, a ski resort area near Collingwood Ont.

Witnesses told police they were "swarmed" by a number of expensive sports cars that were taking up lanes and intimidating traffic on Highway 400, a busy route heading north from Toronto. Some of the cars were allegedly driving faster than 150 km/h, police said.

Twelve drivers were hit with stunt driving charges, and police say they impounded several vehicles made by Lamborghini, Rolls Royce, Mercedes, Porsche and BMW. Those charged with stunt driving face seven-day driving suspensions and a minimum $2,000 fine.

One social media post from Sunday shows a man holding up two middle fingers to police, while standing on a flatbed truck loaded with an impounded sports car. The vehicle appears to be a white Lamborghini with a large Royal Canadian Air Force decal on its side.

Posts shared by the official Instagram account for North Face Rally show many cars still made it to the group's event.

Other posts under the hashtag #northfacerally show the cars departing for the trip north.

Many of the group's social media posts from Sunday appear to have been deleted. However, CTVNews.ca managed to peruse older posts made by the group before they, too, were taken down.

Several Instagram posts by North Face Rally co-founder Aman Toor shed light on how the group spends its time. One video posted last summer shows several bikini-clad young women carrying lettered signs that spell "North Face Rally," marching around the Cabana Pool Bar on Toronto's waterfront.

The event was ostensibly a birthday party for a member identified as @ghostriderto on Instagram. That user has since made his account private, but a video linked on his account shows him getting into a white Lamborghini resembling one confiscated on Sunday.

Another video, from early 2016, shows several sports cars driving down the road at a good clip, though not necessarily over the limit. In the video, which is recorded from the passenger seat of a car, another driver can be seen opening his door while the car is in motion.

"#NorthFaceRally on the way to #BlueMountain," Toor wrote in the post. He also tagged several Toronto-based companies as sponsors.

Many of the videos are no longer visible online.

Lawyer Amedeo DiCarlo, who represents those facing the stunt driving charges, says witnesses are blowing it out of proportion.

"Anybody who sees a fast car go by, it sounds like a fast car simply because it's loud," he told CTV Toronto. He added that the group is being unfairly targeted by "haters."

"You get a lot of haters, and that's (what) the car club calls people who don't have those kinds of cars," he said.

Police say stunt driving charges can be laid even when an individual is not driving at extremely high speed, if they are still intimidating other drivers and making repeated lane changes.

"We do not want people using highways as their little playground racetrack," Sgt. Kerry Schmidt, of Ontario Provincial Police, said Sunday.

With files from CTV Toronto