OK, not literally "lost." More like "totaled." No matter how you parse it, Automotive News [sub] reports that King Triton wasn't happy with the ship carrying the very first batch of 1-Series and M3s headed stateside from the Fatherland. On January 11, a storm knocked the heavy metal loose to play a driverless game of German bumper cars and salvage parts. "Of the 470 vehicles on board, 120 were damaged beyond repair and will have to be scrapped. The others will be repaired, said a BMW spokesman." While one wonders if the customers for those repaired Bimmers will be told of the damage, the automaker is busy trying to figure out if the accident will affect the models' March launch date. 6Speedonline has the gruesome gallery for those of you who can't get enough wrecked exotics, or wait for Autoblog.
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I’ll take one of the “unrepairable” totalled ones for free, thanks.
Anything with a running engine, preferably.
It’ll buff out.
Man, could you imagine getting ahold of one of those “unrepairables” and entering it in 24 hours of LeMons?
You’d have to prove you bought it for $500 or less though.
I remember reading something a while back that you can’t sell an untitled damaged car without putting some sort of salvage title on it. I’m not sure if this is state specific or not. I remember I read it while investigating a Subaru being sold my a dealer that had been plowed in from of the street. Any dealers that might know the rules on this sort of stuff, if it’s based on amount on cost of damage or what.
Also when they say scrapped do they mean brought to a salvage yard or shipped back to Germany to pull engines and stuff out.
If you got two or three or four of the dinged up ones for salvage and swapped parts around, perhaps you could assemble one whole Bimmer on the cheap.
(in slo-mo)
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooo!!!!!
Probably a good number of these will end up at BMW training centers throughout the US (NJ, MD, OH, FL, TX, AZ, CA)
This might seem a bit off topic, but I noticed something when I was looking at the pics from this. Did any of you notice the rather large amount of used Toyota Corollas and Camrys sitting there??? Were they waiting to be shipped overseas??? Could this be why it’s so hard to find five to fifteen year old examples of these cars???
Just wondered…
Damn, I’ll take on N54 and wiring harness please. It would be so perfect for my M3!
To Supreme, depending on where the ship was coming from (Germany I assume), the other older cars you viewed were probably vehicles of our armed forces personnel, being shipped to new duty locations. Hope tthat helps clear the mystery.
I could make a killer coffee table with all four wheels off of that one!
I can imagine one of these “damaged beyond repair” Bimmers as a Jalopnik Project Car Hell. A glorious potential payoff (a BMW 1-Series for next to nothing), tempered by the near-impossibility of getting the parts needed to repair a vehicle that’s already deemed “damaged beyond repair.”
Maybe the fact that these cars had not yet been shipped to dealers will keep them of the street.
Damaged new cars routinely seem to end up with salvage dealers like this one that has a load of brand new Audis in its lot. http://www.casmiami.com/inventory/carlist1.html?MAKE=Audi#Audi
The question is more what happens to them afterwards. Buying a professionally restored vehicle with a documented history might be ok; getting stuck with an improperly fixed and documented lemon is another thing.
Redbarchetta :
January 15th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
When I worked for the Dealer and was responsable for checking in vehicles, It was not uncommon to simply see a notice stating that the vehicle had been repaired in transit. We did not have to report damage that cost less than $1500. and used only factory new parts. If we recieved a vehicle that had more than 1/10 the value of the vehicle in repairs, were sent back to teh Transporter.
I had a 2004 Mini Cooper that had “port damage” that was not disclosed. Turns out that if the damage is below a certain dollar value they do not have to disclose. The only way I found out is when trading the car in the BMW dealership measured the paint thickness and found one of the side panels had paint nearly 7 times as thick. Granted, I could not tell… but still! The dealer actually took money out of the deal because of the “accident damage”. So much for BMW and Mini…
That’s how they’re meant to look, it’s Chris Bangle’s new “hammered surface” design motif.
Saab95JD: No doubt they disclosed the damage to all potential buyers of your trade-in.
A few of TrueDelta’s panel members have reported similar experiences.
I assume you had not bought the MINI from them? That would be a nice twist, to have a dealer knock you for damage they repaired and failed to disclose when they sold you the car.
joemoc1
I’m just curious but how do they repair the cars in transit? Do they have a body shop on the boat? Or after they are off loaded at port do they have a repair shop not far away with parts regularly available to make repairs and paint cars?
That damage actually makes the car look more bearable.
Even with the damage, they look better than the equivalent Mercedes.
Ha! Remember last year, or the year before, where a cargo ship ran aground off England and boxes with new BMW motorcycles were being washed ashore. Plenty of lucky Englishmen ran down to the beach and were able to salvage themselves a brand new BMW motorbike.