A glut of unsold cars

May 16, 2014 10:23 PM

Millions of brand new unsold cars are just sitting redundant on runways and car parks around the world. There, they stay, slowly deteriorating without being maintained.
posted by Chocolate Pickle (9 comments total)

"There is proof that the worlds recession is still biting and wont let go."

Or that people have figured out your choice of:

- Living in an urban area doesn't always mean having or driving a car. By dropping to one vehicle and not driving it very much in lieu of simply relying on local transit service, my household's cost for transportation has been significantly reduced.

- Buying a brand new car, even if it is affordable in raw dollars, isn't the best use of that cash. Buying used or simply not buying at all can work out more favorably.

- Kids--traditional users of the family hand-me-down that is replaced with a new or newer car--aren't driving as soon or as much.

Maybe the initial acceptance of those ideas was led by the recession but the continual hanging-on is, I think, more of an indicator that some societies have decided that doing with less is just fine, even when income returns.
posted by fireoyster at 10:31 PM on May 16, 2014

the author of that page really, really needs to tone it down. I got it the first time.
posted by Dr. Twist at 10:31 PM on May 16, 2014

Which isn't to say that the pictures aren't striking. I just happen to think the cause is different than what the author stated.
posted by fireoyster at 10:31 PM on May 16, 2014

It seems like a borderline crazy hypothesis he didn't really prove. Has anyone fact-checked this site? Temporary storage of cars seems like a normal thing that manufacturers might actually do and the larger conspiracy that this is one big fake market to prop up car companies seems ludicrous, just based on Occam's Razor.
posted by mathowie at 10:32 PM on May 16, 2014 [1 favorite]

Oh man I want to throttle the author. I believe you already!
posted by Joe Chip at 10:35 PM on May 16, 2014

Yeah, this is almost Timecube levels here.

Oh wow

Such problem

Very cars
posted by Doleful Creature at 10:36 PM on May 16, 2014 [3 favorites]

Bottom of page amazingness:

Yes I'm also an author and my book on conspiracy theories has no correlation whatsoever with this webpage.

posted by wemayfreeze at 10:36 PM on May 16, 2014

UPDATE: Currently May 16th, 2014, all of these cars at the Nissan Sunderland test track have disappeared? Now I don't believe they have all suddenly been sold. I would guess they may have been taken away and recycled to make room for the next vast production run.

I feel a bit like someone is about to tell me that the twin towers would never have collapsed like that. The author badly needs to bother to research some actual data.
posted by jaduncan at 10:39 PM on May 16, 2014

It's definitely a true phenomenon -- the photos are evidence, and it's been noted that the industry has gone way past 100 days' supply, a significant milestone. But that also tells you that generally these stockpiles do circulate back to dealers and ultimately customers, just not always at the exact pace they come out of the factory.

The problem for the industry is that you can offer price incentives to move inventory, but the more you do that, the harder it will be to jack the prices back up later on.

I live in a former GM town and the inventory -- usually parked on the grounds of the nearby auto transport contractor -- would definitely reach insane levels at times but then just as mysteriously vanish. Right now we have a company that does retrofits of Penske and other rental trucks, and they stash sometimes hundreds of them in odd places around town.
posted by dhartung at 10:40 PM on May 16, 2014 [1 favorite]