Two years ago the freighter Cougar Ace nearly sank, spending weeks bobbing at an impossible-looking angle in the North Atlantic. The cargo was eventually saved (you can read about the salvage effort here), but what does one do with cars that have spent weeks at sea? Can you be sure that they weren’t damaged?
The Wall Street Journal says that Mazda had lots of potential buyers. Movie studios wanted to use them as stunt cars. High schools wanted them for auto shop classes. In the end, Mazda decided to destroy them. All of them.
From the Wall Street Journal:
Mazda turned everyone away. It worried about getting sued someday if, say, an air-bag failed to fire properly due to overexposure to salty sea air.
It also worried that scammers might find a way to spirit the cars abroad to sell as new. That happened to thousands of so-called “Katrina cars” salvaged from New Orleans’ flooding three years ago. Those cars — their electronics gone haywire and sand in the engines — were given a paint job and unloaded in Latin America on unsuspecting buyers, damaging auto makers’ reputations.
Mazda saw no easy way to guard against these outcomes. So it decided to destroy approximately $100 million worth of factory-new automobiles. “We couldn’t run the risk of damaging the brand name that Mazda worked so hard over the years to develop,” says Jeremy Barnes, the company’s corporate-affairs director for North America.
It turns out that wrecking cars isn’t a simple matter. “We had to create a disassembly line, basically,” says Bob Turbett, the Mazda executive overseeing the destruction process.
Crazy!
A Crushing Issue: How To Destroy Brand New Cars [WSJ] (Thanks, Erie!)
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Good for Mazda for making sure a bunch of potentially bad/unsafe cars never make it into use.
I applaud Mazada for doing this. They actually care enough about their reputation to destroy the cars. Try this with an American car maker, GM or Chrysler. I doubt they would do the same.
@TechnoDestructo:
I assume that they’ll be recycling materials since they’re disassembling the cars, not just crushing them into squares.
@Buran:
I think you’re missing my point.
This is, obviously, incredibly wasteful resource-wise, but that was not what my post was taking issue with.
@trujunglist:
I hope they shoot them at the moon. The moon needs more scrap metal.
This story was great in Wired mag. It reminded me of this one:
[www.tricolorsalvage.com]
Same deal except the Tricolor sank all the way and they cut it into pieces with a diamond encrusted rope. They cut right through the cars in the hold and everything. Then they had a huge crane pick up the pieces and cut them up smaller on land. Lots of great pics of destruction on the website above.
Mazda did the right thing. It is not hard to imagine a story on The Consumerist titled “Mazda Sells Cars From Half Sunken Ship as New. Buyers SOL”
It is unfortunate that a guy died to save that ship. Seems like everyone would have been better off if it had just sunk.
@Voyou_Charmant: “Boo Hoo – LEAVE TRIAL LAWYERS ALONE!”
If you would like just one example of why nobody respects trial lawyers…How about the Florida case of the woman spilling hot coffee on herself and successfully suing Mcdonalds?
Mazda absolutely did the right thing.
@bdgbill: Re the Mickey D’s case: McD’s deliberately kept their coffee at superhot (scalding) temps, 700 previous ppl had gotten serious burns, the person suing got 3rd degree burns, etc etc. Yeah I expect coffee to be hot, but I don’t expect it to burn away my skin in seconds if I spill it. More info: [www.lectlaw.com]
@Buran: Mazda did the right thing. Any part from those cars would be suspect and if installed in another vehicle that was in an accident, lawyers would be having a feeding frenzy.
The right thing was done and the raw material will be recycled into something else.
@bdgbill: Before you cite this case as an example you should really read the case notes to understand it.
-The woman in question did something stupid by putting the cup between her legs, yes.
-However, there was a precedent of McDonalds serving coffee at dangerous temperatures, they had been repeatedly told they should not be doing this and didn’t listen.
-The woman suffered third degree burns.
-The intent was to teach McDonalds a lesson not to endanger their customers.
-The amount awarded was the amount McDonalds makes from the sales of coffee in on day.
There are examples of ridiculous, irresponsible litigation, but this is not one of them.
Mazda “to” destroy? Or rather, Mazda *has* destroyed.