Graveyards for Unsold Cars

When automakers have unsold cars, they often ship them to locations where the automobiles sit until they fall apart. An article in Zero Hedge claims the lots are vast graveyards for unsold cars, but other observers are challenging the charges.

One of these massive parking lots for unsold cars is in Sheerness, in north Kent, England. There are hundreds of similar lots around the world, including more than 57,000 rotting cars in one location in Baltimore.

The report claims sales of new cars has been declining over the last few years, leaving millions of cars without an owner. They sit in the giant lots, unused and unmaintained.

As manufacturers produce more cars, the companies buy more land around the auto graveyards to contain the vehicles.

Zero Hedge stated, “The car industry would never sell these cars at massive reductions in their prices to get rid of them, no they still want every buck. If they were to price these cars for a couple of thousand they would sell them. However, nobody would then buy any expensive cars and then they would end up being unsold.”

Many of these giant lots are visible on Google Maps, including a former test track in Sunderland, England. That track was recently closed due to the enormous number of unsold cars covering the grounds. The latest map views show the automobiles disappeared, according to Zero Hedge.

Matt Hardigree, writing for Jalopnik, states that many of the pictures shown by Zero Hedge are old.

He said, “Go back into the Getty or AFP or AP sources for these photos and you’ll see, by and large, they’re photos from the middle of the post-recession Carpocalypse when the car market collapsed in Europe and the United States.”

If the reports of auto gravelyards are true, this would not be the first time corporations have thrown away vast quantities of unsold product. In 1983, Atari buried tens of thousands of copies of their video Game, E.T. the Extraterrestrial, after suffering the worst failure ever in the history of electronic games.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-05-16/where-worlds-unsold-cars-go-die

http://jalopnik.com/that-zero-hedge-article-on-unsold-cars-is-bullshit-1578124255

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-05-01/another-month-another-gm-channel-

stuffing-record

http://www.vincelewis.net/unsoldcars.html

http://www.snopes.com/photos/automobiles/unsoldcars.asp