A crushing issue: How to destroy brand-new cars
 

A crushing issue: How to destroy brand-new cars
Mazda forced to design a 'disassembly' line after odd sea disaster
The Cougar Ace cargo ship was loaded with more than 4000 new Mazdas, including the Mazda 3, when it ran into trouble in 2006.
"Fire in the hole!" shouts Ron Hoodenpyle, covering his ears and stepping away from a brand-new Mazda 3 he just wired with special detonators. Suddenly, all six of the car's airbags explode at once.

Within hours the metallic blue sedan will be drained, gutted, squished and shredded--one of thousands to meet the same fate here. The cars are so new, most don't even have 10 miles on the odometer.

Automakers usually try to find the best way to build new vehicles. These days, Mazda Motor Corp. is busy figuring out how to most efficiently destroy them.

It all started about two years ago, when a ship carrying 4703 shiny new Mazdas nearly sank in the Pacific. The freighter, the Cougar Ace, spent weeks bobbing on the high seas, listing at a severe 60-degree angle, before finally being righted..............
http://www.autoweek.com/apps/pbcs.dl...8/newsletter01
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120942873506551291.html

I heard about this on the news! According to ABC News they lost $100 million by destroy them. Even with insurance that is a lot!

They said they did it so that these cars didn't turn bad because of unforseen water damage. Seemed like the right thing to do to me!

The story say $100 million worth of vehicles.
As for damage angle:
"The Japanese carmaker, controlled by Ford Motor Corp., easily could have found takers for the vehicles. Hundreds of people called about buying cheap Mazdas. Schools wanted them for auto-shop courses. Hollywood asked about using them for stunts.

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 automakers' reputations."

I read this story in the WSJ today, it was really impressive. I give Mazda credit for doing the right thing and even though the cars were lost and it took a long time to get all the processes in place to dispose of them properly, it sounds like it was done responsibly and since they did it that way their insurance did cover the cost to destroy them all.

Interesting follow-up: High Tech Cowboys of the Deep Seas: The Race to Save the Couga
 

High Tech Cowboys of the Deep Seas: The Race to Save the Cougar Ace

Latitude 48° 14 North. Longitude 174° 26 West.
Almost midnight on the North Pacific, about 230 miles south of Alaska's Aleutian Islands. A heavy fog blankets the sea. There's nothing but the wind spinning eddies through the mist.
Out of the darkness, a rumble grows. The water begins to vibrate. Suddenly, the prow of a massive ship splits the fog. Its steel hull rises seven stories above the water and stretches two football fields back into the night. A 15,683-horsepower engine roars through the holds, pushing 55,328 tons of steel. Crisp white capital letters — COUGAR ACE — spell the ship's name above the ocean froth. A deep-sea car transport, its 14 decks are packed with 4,703 new Mazdas bound for North America. Estimated cargo value: $103 million.
http://www.wired.com/science/discove...urrentPage=all

Did they do the right thing?

I tend to disagree. These cars could have been used for a purpose to benefit lots of people, yet due to the pervasive lawsuit culture it is cheaper and easier to just destroy them.

And after reading both stories, just what purpose could these cars have been used to benefit made kind???

Seems as if recycling them was a pretty good way of doing so. Just MVHO.