Car plunges almost 40 metres onto Adelaide beach

A car has plunged almost 40 metres off a cliff at a popular sunset-watching spot in Adelaide's south, crashing onto the rocky beach below.

The vehicle owner's son, Marcus Mitchell, told 9News he believes a faulty electronic handbrake was to blame for the Chery Tiggo rolling away from her parents' driveway with nobody inside.

"The car's battery was flat, which I had jump-started," Marcus said. 

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"I believed I'd put the brake on and gone inside."

The car passed through a fence before falling off the cliff, narrowly missing a group of people watching the sunset from the clifftop on The Esplanade in Hallett Cove. 

"Sometimes people are on the rocks, they walk there. Thank God there was nobody there," the car's owner Lotte Mitchell said.

The vehicle was purchased in December, but Marcus says it's given them technical trouble ever since.

"It's possible that there was a failure in the power. Basically, when the power fails, you can open up the doors of the vehicle," he said.

Motoring experts have told 9News that vehicles typically have redundancies to ensure the parking brakes remain engaged, even if a battery goes flat.

It was too dark and too difficult last night to retrieve the vehicle, and it's still not clear exactly how it will be removed from the rocks.

This article was produced with the assistance of 9ExPress.