Four people are suspected to have perished after a car crashed and burst into flames in Victoria’s northeast high country.

The burned-out car was found on Sunday morning on Mansfield-Woods Point Road in Piries, southeast of Mansfield.

Police believe the driver lost control before the vehicle caught fire.

They say all occupants died at the scene but are yet to establish how many people were inside the car and the time of the crash.

Disaster victim identification specialists expect to provide an update by Monday morning.

“We think there are four,” Road Policing Command Assistant Commissioner Glenn Weir told reporters on Sunday.

“We don’t think there are more than four but again (it’s) a really catastrophic and confronting scene.”

It is believed the victims were colleagues, with the car rented from a west Gippsland-based company.

“All the people we think were known to each other and had a common connection through work,” Assistant Commissioner Weir said.

“We think the people are relatively local within the sort of Shepparton, Benalla and Mansfield area.”

A witness called police at 7.45am and by the time officers and the Country Fire Authority arrived, the car was barley ablaze. 

Assistant Commissioner Weir said police believe the crash and the subsequent fire took place on Sunday morning, not long before the witness spotted the car.

“It’s not a heavily trafficked road … so in the pitch dark a fire would have been visable for some distance,” he said.

Benign whether conditions limited the spread of the blaze.

The incident came after 12 people died in crashes in Victoria last weekend, including five when a car ploughed into a Daylesford pub’s beer garden.

More than 250 lives have been lost on the state’s roads this year, surpassing the 2022 full-year road toll of 241.