I was just browsing the MS Virtual Earth blog to catch up on the latest news about the development of maps.live.com when I came across this interesting piece entitled "Texas Shredder meets the Mazdas of the Cougar Ace"
tinyurl.com/65uyk2 (virtualearth.spaces.live.com/blog/)
Which led me to a Wired article about a ship which suffered a little pumping mishap en route carrying around 5000 new Mazdas from Japan to USA.
tinyurl.com/2xnrlu (www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/)
Now, the Wired piece reads like Clive Cussler, describes a fatal accident and contains some quotes which would not make it past the swear filter on here (not by a long chalk).
It also describes how over 4000 perfectly good, brand new cars that had simply spent 2 weeks at a 60 degree angle, never touching any water, were shredded.
What would you have done with them???
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Not sure what I would have done with them, thought they may have tried recycling parts etc, or sold as slavlage similar to cat a / b in uk where some parts could be reused.
Interesting read. The writer should be writing novels!
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"the ballast tanks need to be drained of foreign water and simultaneously refilled with local water"
I knew Americans were xenophobic, but that's ridiculous. What do they do about ocean currents..?
Shame about the Mazdas, though.
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What a waste
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Surely Mazda (or their insurers) could have registered say a dozen or so of the cars, and given them to employees to use for 6 months to assess longevity; perhaps even crash tested a couple to try airbags etc. If they seemed OK after the testing, the cars could have been sold off as transport soiled/NO warrantys applying at say, half the new cost. This would have been far better than shredding them, and i would certainly buy one! What an absolute waste!!
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at say half the new cost.
Don't forget that the manufacturing cost of a car is only about half the new cost.
In business, it's better to just move on. You sell the cars with no warranty then next thing you're being taken to court because you shouldn't have sold cars that might have been faulty etc etc. Then the brand gets damaged. It's a can of worms.
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Don't forget that the manufacturing cost of a car is only about half the new cost.
May be less than 1/3 of list
In a litigaceous US Society maybe 1 x airbag that does not go off due to salt water could resul in a claim for a lot more than £50m! It is not worth it.
That said if they had been RHD and 1/2 price I'd have bought one
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Not forgetting that the cargo will have been insured, so the decision may not even have been made by Mazda.
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"the ballast tanks need to be drained of foreign water and simultaneously refilled with local water" I knew Americans were xenophobic but that's ridiculous. What do they do about ocean currents..?
A very interesting read.... ref the changing of the ballast water - that's an international requirement which has recently come into law and applies to all shipping worldwide; its to help prevent alien species of marine life damaging the environment and causing the extinction of native species.
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Here's a few ideas of mine regarding what they could have done with them:
[1] set up one-model circuit racing championships on several continents with a world final,
[2] make them available world-wide through national motor sport associations for production car rallying,
[3] test a sample (100) to destruction on an accelerated wear programme, (this would have to be partially farmed out to places like MIRA etc.) replace any components across the fleet that fail dangerous, sell the remaining 4,500 as second-hand,
[4] donate them to ten African countries (with unleaded fuel availability) to replace their ancient city taxi fleets,
I would hope that this sort of brainstorming would have gone on at Mazda HQ but at the end of the day the fear of litigation forced them to shred each one.
What do you think are the combined carbon emissions on the manufacture and disposal of 4703 cars (including the 1000hp shredder)?
Edited by Billy Whizz on 08/04/2008 at 22:24
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I like option 4. But that would be too simple in this mad money driven world we live in.,
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Here's a few ideas of mine regarding what they could have done with them: [1] set up one-model circuit racing championships on several continents with a world final
The same thought had crossed my mind as well! - An ideal PR opportunity. Also perhaps donating some of the un re-useable ones to schools & colleges for automotive engineering students to work on?
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That's a very good idea. All they would have to do would be to remove the ECU and it pretty much puts it beyond economical recovery if they also register them as Cat C.
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in reply to JBJ and scc,
An article on today's BBC news
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7392072.stm
quote:
The UN lists "invasive species" dispersed by ballast water discharges as one of the four main threats to the world's marine ecosystems.
unquote
Edited by Billy Whizz on 12/05/2008 at 13:17
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I can see that 4703 Mazdas might become that !
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