Hope your not waiting on a new Mazda

[spinner26]

http://www.motoring.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=3359182 :eek: :shakehead


Thousands of Mazdas stranded on Pacific ship

July 28, 2006

Vancouver, British Columbia - The fate of thousands of Mazda cars was uncertain this week after the ship carrying them to North America rolled on its side in the Pacific Ocean.

The Cougar Ace rolled sideways when the massive ship's ballast tank was adjusted.

More than half the cars on board are Mazda 3 models, the automaker's best-selling vehicle. Another quarter of the cars are Mazda's 2007 CX7 crossovers, Barnes added.

[nrc]

I read somewhere that the cars should be ok because they're secured, but I'd be concerned about a car that was hanging on its side by the shipping mounts for a week.

[cameraman]

The Cougar Ace rolled sideways when the massive ship's ballast tank was adjusted.That's quite the ballast transfer screw up. It will be interesting to hear what stupid human tricks were involved to foul things up that badly.

[Ankf00]

aren't the majority of these freighters heavily automated?

[KLang]

That's quite the ballast transfer screw up..

Indeed.

http://www.alaskareport.com/images/ace.jpg http://www.adn.com/ips_rich_content/479-cougar-ace-300-x-230.jpg

How does someone screw up that badly? :saywhat:

[racer2c]

aren't the majority of these freighters heavily automated?

Did anyone every hear what the cause was on the giant cruise ship that listed and injured some folks?

[dando]

Did anyone every hear what the cause was on the giant cruise ship that listed and injured some folks?


In a statement last week, Alan Buckelew, president of Princess Cruises, attributed the mishap to human error, but he declined to provide details.

http://www.latimes.com/travel/la-tr-log30jul30,1,548258.story?coll=la-travel-headlines

-Kevin

[G.]

How does someone screw up that badly? :saywhat:Ever hear of someone named Tony George? :gomer:

[Spicoli]

Indeed.

http://www.alaskareport.com/images/ace.jpg http://www.adn.com/ips_rich_content/479-cougar-ace-300-x-230.jpg

How does someone screw up that badly? :saywhat:

See: George, Tony. :D

[G.]

Second place is first loser, Spicoli.

;)

[KLang]

Good point but I thought FTG was unique in his ability to screw up badly. :p

[oddlycalm]

Could have been an equipment issue, but more likely it was a human error due to someone without adequate experience or a language problem between the European captain (likely) and the Asian crew.

Back in 2002 a ship sunk with 2862 cars including the entire initial North American shipment of the then new Volvo XC90. I had my M3 on the water around that time and it made me real nervous after a year on a waiting list and six more weeks waiting for a production slot. I was checking the Wallenius site for ship status updates daily until the ship cleared the Panama canal.
Volvos sunk (http://www.autoworld.com/apps/news/FullStory.asp?id=2105)

oc

[Spicoli]

Second place is first loser, Spicoli.

;)

Yeah, but my champCar driber can beat up your champcar driber.

:gomer:

[RacinM3]

Yep, reminded me of the Tricolor wreck, too.

They salvaged that HUGE ship (and the cars for crushing) by pulling a big cable beneath it back and forth, literally cutting it into sections that were then raised.

Pretty interesting websites:

http://www.tricolorsalvage.com/pages/newsitem.asp?pageid=571

http://www.geocities.com/uksteve.geo/tricolor.html

[KLang]

Could have been an equipment issue

New Windows based stabilization system? ;)

[dando]

Could have been an equipment issue, but more likely it was a human error due to someone without adequate experience or a language problem between the European captain (likely) and the Asian crew.

Back in 2002 a ship sunk with 2862 cars including the entire initial North American shipment of the then new Volvo XC90. I had my M3 on the water around that time and it made me real nervous after a year on a waiting list and six more weeks waiting for a production slot. I was checking the Wallenius site for ship status updates daily until the ship cleared the Panama canal.
Volvos sunk (http://www.autoworld.com/apps/news/FullStory.asp?id=2105)

oc
Dint BMW have a ship go down a few years back?

-Kevin

[oddlycalm]

Dint BMW have a ship go down a few years back? The Tricolor did have a slew of BMW's on it. The big noise was about the Volvo XC90 because it was a new model and the entire first shipment was lost, but the majority of the cars on the ship were from BMW.

oc

[dando]

The Tricolor did have a slew of BMW's on it. The big noise was about the Volvo XC90 because it was a new model and the entire first shipment was lost, but the majority of the cars on the ship were from BMW.

oc
Screw Vulva. Viva Bimmer!! ;)

-Kevin

[cameraman]

Those guys were amateurs.

These guys were professionals - 3700+ cars...

http://www.cargolaw.com/images/disaster2003.hual3GIF

[RacinM3]

What wreck is that?

[grafddrx7]

What wreck is that?

Tracy and Tagliani at the Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

[Spicoli]

What wreck is that?

IRL - Atlanta.

you could see it frum space. :gomer:

[nrc]

Just came across this on the Mazda site. Mazda says that some of the cars were salvagable, but none of them will be sold as new. As an assurance they've posted all the affected VIN numbers to their web site. No word on whether they'll still have a new warranty.

http://www.mazdausa.com/MusaWeb/displayPage.action?pageParameter=aboutPress

[RacinM3]

If you're planning on building a Mazda race car, now's the time to call....

[matthole]

Just came across this on the Mazda site. Mazda says that some of the cars were salvagable, but none of them will be sold as new. As an assurance they've posted all the affected VIN numbers to their web site. No word on whether they'll still have a new warranty.

http://www.mazdausa.com/MusaWeb/displayPage.action?pageParameter=aboutPress

Apparently they changed their mind. (http://www.autoweek.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080429/FREE/360566202/1528/newsletter01) :\


A crushing issue: How to destroy brand-new cars
Mazda forced to design a 'disassembly' line after odd sea disaster
By JOEL MILLMAN , Wall Street Journal Online


"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.

The mishap created a dilemma: What to do with the cars? They had remained safely strapped down throughout the ordeal--but no one knew for sure what damage, if any, might be caused by dangling cars at such a steep angle for so long. Might corrosive fluids seep into chambers where they don't belong? Was the Cougar Ace now full of lemons?

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.

No easy Way

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.

It took more than a year to devise a plan that satisfied everyone. The city of Portland wanted assurance that nearly 5,000 cars' worth of antifreeze, brake fluid and other hazardous goop wasn't mishandled. Insurers covering Mazda's losses wanted to be sure the company wouldn't resell any cars or parts--thereby profiting on the side. So every steel-alloy wheel has to be sliced, every battery rendered inoperable, and every tire damaged beyond repair. All CD players must get smashed.

Discharging airbags

Little things make a big difference. For instance, most of the cars have six airbags, and discharging them individually (forcing them to inflate so they can't be resold) takes about five minutes apiece--or a total of a half-hour per car. So engineers back at Mazda's headquarters, in Hiroshima, fashioned a device that can discharge all six at once. Multiplied by 4703 cars, that trick alone saved months of work.

Mazda declined to put a price tag on the demolition, which was covered by insurance. The company says all its insurance claims have been settled.

The process runs with startling efficiency. It begins when longshoremen take the cars from the freighter and drive them to a nearby lot where the airbags get destroyed by men like Hoodenpyle.

On a recent day, dressed in a white jumpsuit and wearing goggles, he twiddled a few knobs on his special airbag detonator, and pushed a button. The staccato pop-pop-pop of exploding bags sounded like the muffled gunshots of a wise-guy assassination in a gangster film.

A forklift next piles the cars onto trailers for a brief ride to Pacific Car Crushing. There it takes about 45 minutes to prepare each Mazda for flattening. Steel-alloy wheels are sliced with high-power saws to make sure they won't be resold. Holes are drilled into every tire.

Mazda insists that armed guards patrol the site to deter pilferage. One guard keeps watch as catalytic converters, rich with precious metals like platinum, are removed. Parts like these have a street value of hundreds of dollars apiece.

The cars get placed into a crusher that applies 25,000 pounds per square inch of pressure, flattening them into colorful slabs.

Next stop: Schnitzer Steel, a salvage yard down on the waterfront that's home to an immense metal grinder. "You turn 7,000-horsepower hammers loose on them, and they're eaten in 10 seconds," says Jamie Wilson, Schnitzer's manager. A bemused smile spreads across his face as another load of Mazdas disappears into its maw.

Moments later, metal shards--most no bigger than an ashtray--sprinkle onto a mountain of scrap near Schnitzer's dock. There, a freighter prepares to take the scrap back to Asia where it will get recycled.

Wilson looks on and concludes: "It'll all probably end up coming back as cars."

[extramundane]

Wired ran a story (http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-03/ff_seacowboys?currentPage=all) on the salvage team that recovered the Cougar Ace. Movie deal pending (http://www.joshuadavis.net/salvagemovie.html).

[chop456]

This could be bigger than Raise the Titanic! (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081400/) :gomer:, which I actually saw in the theater for some reason. :saywhat:

[oddlycalm]

Nice shout out for the Schnitzer car shredder :thumbup:

oc

[G.]

Wired ran a story (http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/16-03/ff_seacowboys?currentPage=all) on the salvage team that recovered the Cougar Ace. Movie deal pending (http://www.joshuadavis.net/salvagemovie.html).
Great story!

Thanks.

[chop456]

Thinking about this, it seems they could strip a couple hundred of them and turn them into race cars. Obviously that'd depend on what was on board, but I could see a Mazda3 spec series if nothing else.

[racermike]

Nice shout out for the Schnitzer car shredder :thumbup:

oc


I have had the chance to see that shredder work in person, and lets just say you dont want to get any of your appendages caught in this machine. You would have a very very very bad day. Its amazing to watch it consume big chunky metal objects like they were chunks of butter in a Cuisinart.

[extramundane]

Thinking about this, it seems they could strip a couple hundred of them and turn them into race cars. Obviously that'd depend on what was on board, but I could see a Mazda3 spec series if nothing else.

Yeah, I completely understand not selling them retail, but I'm surprised they didn't work up some super-bulletproof AS-IS contract and offer them for racing, parts, etc. Maybe because it was 3s and CX7s rather than Miatas and 6s?

[Sean O'Gorman]

Obviously that'd depend on what was on board, but I could see a Mazda3 spec series if nothing else.

Well, if Spec Miata is any indication, thats one way to go about destroying cars.

[Brickman]

WSJ (http://www.switched.com/2008/04/30/mazda-sends-4-703-new-cars-to-the-scrap-heap/?icid=100214839x1201313838x1200054517)