Yves Verna, below, and his wife Bridgette were on their way from Freeport, L.I., to a funeral in East Orange, N.J., on Friday afternoon and had been stuck in backed-up, rush-hour traffic in Soho on Broome St. for almost an hour, when, while crossing Thompson St., Verna noticed smoke coming out of the engine of his Mercedes-Benz. He pulled over to the curb, and just after the couple had gotten out of the car, it burst into flames. After a while, the flames appeared to be dying down, but then some motor oil in the trunk caught fire. It took firefighters more than a half-hour to put out the car. Afterwards, Verna said he thought being stalled in traffic might have contributed to the fire, since there wasn’t as much air circulating through the engine to cool it.
