YORK company boss Simon Conder's high-speed test drive in a powerful sports car ended in an ''horrific'' five-vehicle smash in which the £40,000 TVR Tuscan he was driving disintegrated, a court was told.

Harrogate magistrates heard yesterday how Conder's wife, Lyn, had to be airlifted to hospital with a broken neck and her pelvis fractured in five places - while his pelvis sustained seven breaks - after a Saturday afternoon spin from the showrooms of Harrogate Horseless Carriages ended on the town's southern bypass.

When Conder, 45, pleaded guilty to dangerous driving, prosecutor Peter Scott said witnesses had put the speed of the TVR in the minutes before it went out of control at up to 90mph. One witness had formed the impression it was in a race with an Audi.

A Peugeot 306 driven by Lorraine Marsden, 18, from Cookridge, Leeds, bore the brunt of the impact. She had escaped with severe bruising and whiplash injuries while her sister, Pauline, 21, sustained fractures to an arm, a foot and a cheekbone.

Mr Scott said Conder, of Lakeside, Acaster Malbis, near York, had been seen to skid first right and then left as he drove east. Then the TVR went out of control, spinning clockwise across the road into the path of oncoming vehicles.

Court chairman Mike Garnett told Conder, who runs his own company dealing in wood veneer products, the Bench had decided not to send him to Crown Court for a stiffer sentence than the six months' jail available to magistrates. But probation reports covering all sentencing options were needed.

Mr Garnett adjourned the hearing until February 10 and banned Conder, who covers 50,000 miles a year and has a 27-year exemplary driving record, from getting behind the wheel of a vehicle in the meantime.

In mitigation, Gordon Richardson said Conder, the father of children aged 16 and 13, could remember nothing of the incident. But his wife could. ''She tells me she felt comfortable about the manner in which the vehicle was being driven immediately prior to the accident.

''She has a recollection of an Audi presenting a difficulty because as Conder went to overtake it, it accelerated. He had to get back in or get past. He chose the latter, a grave error of judgment.''

Mr Richardson said Conder knew how lucky he and his wife had been to escape death and he wanted to express his regret to others involved in what had been an horrific accident. But it had been a one-off in a strange and powerful car and a salutary lesson.

Updated: 11:36 Tuesday, January 21, 2003