Peak Oil is You
Donate Bitcoins ;-) or Paypal :-)
Page added on May 17, 2014
Where the World’s Unsold Cars Go To Die
In the past several years, one of the topics covered in detail on these pages has been the surge in such gimmicks designed to disguise lack of demand and end customer sales, used extensively by US automotive manufacturers, better known as “channel stuffing”, of which General Motors is particularly guilty and whose inventory at dealer lots just hit a new record high. But did you know that when it comes to flat or declining sales and stagnant end demand, channel stuffing is merely the beginning?
Presenting…
Where the World’s Unsold Cars Go To Die (courtesy of Vincent Lewis’ Unsold Cars)
Above is just a few of the thousands upon thousands of unsold cars at Sheerness, United Kingdom. Please do see this on Google Maps….type in Sheerness, United Kingdom. Look to the west coast, below River Thames next to River Medway. Left of A249, Brielle Way.
Timestamp: Friday, May 16th, 2014.
There are hundreds of places like this in the world today and they keep on piling up…
THE WORLDS UNSOLD CAR STOCKPILE
Houston…We have a problem!…Nobody is buying brand new cars anymore! Well they are, but not on the scale they once were. 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.
Below is an image of a massive car park at Swindon, United Kingdom, with thousands upon thousands of unsold cars just sitting there with not a buyer in sight. The car manufacturers have to buy more and more land just to park their cars as they perpetually roll off the production line.
There is proof that the worlds recession is still biting and wont let go. All around the world there are huge stockpiles of unsold cars and they are being added to every day. They have run out of space to park all of these brand new unsold cars and are having to buy acres and acres of land to store them.
NOTE:
The images on this webpage showing all of these unsold cars are just a very small portion of those around the world. There are literally thousands of these “car parks” rammed full of unsold cars in practically every country on the planet. Just in case you were wondering, these images have not been Photoshopped, they are the real deal!
Its hard to believe that there are so many unsold cars in the world but its true. The worse part is that the amount of unsold cars keeps on getting bigger every day.
It would be fair to say that it is becoming a mechanical epidemic of epic proportions. If anybody from outer space is reading this webpage, we here on Earth have too many cars, why not come and buy a few hundred thousand of them for your own planet! (sorry but this is all I can think of)
Below is shown just a few of the 57,000 cars (and growing) that await delivery from their home in the Port of Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.A. With Google Maps look South of Broening Hwy in Dundalk for the massive expanse of space where all these cars are parked up.
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. Its quite a pickle we have gotten ourselves into.
Below is shown an image of the Nissan test track in Sunderland United Kingdom. Only it is no longer being used, reason…there are too many unsold cars parked up on it! The amount of cars keeps on piling up on it until its overflowing. Nissan then acquires more land to park up the cars, as they continue to come off the production line.
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.
Indeed next to that test track and adjacent to the Nissan factory, they are collating again as shown on the Google Maps image below. So where did the last lot go? This is not an employees car park by the way.
None of the images on this webpage are of ordinary car parks at shopping malls, football matches etc. Trust me, they are just mountains and mountains of brand spanking new unsold cars. There is no real reason why you should be driving an old clunker now is there?
The car industry cannot stop making new cars because they would have to close their factories and lay off tens of thousands of employees. This would further add to the recession. Also the domino effect would be catastrophic as steel manufactures would not sell their steel. All the tens of thousands of places where car components are made would also be effected, indeed the world could come to a grinding halt.
Below is shown just a small area of a gigantic car park in Spain where tens of thousands of cars just sit and sunbathe all day.
They are also piling up at the port of Valencia in Spain as seen below. They are either waiting to be exported to…nowhere or have been imported…to go nowhere.
Tens of thousands of cars are still being made every week but hardly any of them are being sold. Nearly every household in developed countries already has a car or even two or three cars parked up on their driveway as it is.
Below is an image of thousands upon thousands of unsold cars parked up on a runway near St Petersburg in Russia. They are all imported from Europe, they are all then parked up and they are all then left to rot. Consequently, the airport is now unusable for its original purpose.
The cycle of buying, using, buying using has been broken, it is now just a case of “using” with no buying. Below is an image of thousands of unsold cars parked up on an disused runway at Upper Heyford, Bicester, Oxfordshire. They are seriously running out of space to store these cars.
It is a sorry state of affairs and there is no answer to it, solutions don’t exist. So the cars just keep on being manufactured and keep on adding to the millions of unsold cars already sitting redundant around the world.
Below are parked tens of thousands of cars at Royal Portbury Docks, Avonmouth, near Bristol in the United Kingdom. If you look on Google Maps and scan around the area at say 200ft you will see nothing but parked up unsold cars. They are absolutley everywhere in that area practically every open space has unsold cars parked up on it.
Below is that same area in Avonmouth, UK, but zoomed out. Every gray space that you see is filled with unsold cars. Anyone want to hazard a guess at how many are there…
As it is, there are more cars than there are people on the planet with an estimated 10 billion roadworthy cars in the world today.
We literally cannot make enough of them. Below are seen just a few of the thousands of Citroen’s parked up at Corby, Northamptonshire in England. They are being added to daily, imported from France but with nowhere else to go once they arrive.
So there they sit, brand spanking new cars, all with a couple of miles on the clock that was consummate with them being driven to their car parks. Below is the latest May 2014 Google Maps image of unsold cars in Corby, Northamptonshire.
Manufacturing more cars than can be sold is against all logic, logistics and economics but it continues day after day, week after week, month after month, year in year out.
Below is shown a recent (April 2014) screen grab from Google Maps of the Italian port of Civitavecchia. All those little specks are a few thousand brand new unsold Peugeots. Just collecting dust and maybe a bit of salty sea spray!
Below, all nice and shiny but with nowhere to go. Red and white and black and silver, purple, pink and blue, all the colors of the rainbow and be they all brand new. Indeed all the colors of the rainbow are down there on those cars, making pretty mosaics, montages of color and still life. Maybe that is all they will now ever be, surreal urban art of the techno production age. Magnificent metal boxes, wasting space and saving grace, all sitting still, because its business at mill.
All around the world these cars just keep on piling up, there is no end in sight. The economy shouts out quite loud that nobody has the money anymore to spend on a new car. The reason being that they are making their “old” cars go on a lot longer. But we cannot stop making them, soon we will run out of space to park them. We are nearly running out of space to drive them that’s for sure!
Below, more cars mount up in the port of Valencia in Spain. They will not be exported as there is nowhere for them to go, so they just sit and rot in their colorful droves.
Gone are the days when the family would have a new car every year, they are now keeping what they have got. It may be fair to say that some families still get a new car every year but its the majority that now do not.
The results are in these images, hundreds of thousands if not millions of cars around the world are driven from their factories, parked up and left.
Could we say that these cars have been left to rot! Maybe, as these cars will certainly rot if they are not bought, driven and cared for. It does not look like they will be sold any day soon, many of them have been standing for over 12 months or even longer and this is detrimental to the car.
Below, as far as the eye can see, right into the background, cars, cars and more cars. But what’s beyond the horizon? Have a guess…Yes that’s right…even more cars! All brand new but with no homes to go to. Do you think they will ever start giving them away, that may be the only radical solution. Who knows, you could soon be getting a free car with every packet of cornflakes.
When a car is left standing idle, all the oil sinks to the bottom of the sump, and then corrosion begins to set in on all the internal engine parts where the oil has drained away.
Cold corrosion is when condensation builds up in the cylinders and rust forms in the bores. The engines would then start to seize and would need to be professionally freed before they could be started. Also the tires start to lose air and the batteries start to go flat, indeed the detrimental list goes on and on.
So the longer they sit there the worse it slowly becomes for them. What is the answer to this? Well they need to be sold and that just isn’t happening.
The epidemic is not improving, it is getting worse. Car manufactureres are constantly coming out with new models with the latest technology in them. Hence prospective buyers of, for example, a new Citroen Xsara Picasso want the latest model, not last years model. Hence all the unsold Citroen Xsara Picasso cars from the previous year will now have even lesser chance of being sold.
The problems then just keep on mounting up. In the end, the unsold cars that are say 2 years old will have no alternative but to be either crushed up, dismantled and/or their parts recycled.
Some car manufacturers moved their production over to China, General Motors and Cadillac are examples of this. They are then shipped over in containers and unloaded at ports. However they are now being told to put a big halt in their import into the U.S.A. as they just can’t sell them in the quantities they would desire. Consequently Chinese car parks are now filling up with brand new American cars. Well nobody in China can afford them on their meagre pittance wages, so there they will stay until our economy improves…which it might do in a few generations.
33 Comments on "Where the World’s Unsold Cars Go To Die"
peakyeast on Sat, 17th May 2014 6:45 am
OMFG.. Couldnt they at least have sorted them according to colour 😀
Makati1 on Sat, 17th May 2014 8:57 am
I passed over several places like this on my recent trip. Saw some at Detroit as we took off for Atlanta. The car lots in my home area of PA are over stuffed with new cars. People can no longer afford to buy new and will repair what they have as long as possible. Some own their last car now.
This is insanity at it’s best. A sure sign we are not far from the cliff.
bobinget on Sat, 17th May 2014 9:10 am
Humans can’t picture numbers that well.
Ten thousand cars may look to some, like a million.
so far this year, world wide 26,000,000 cars have been made. By Christmas it will be 60 million.
China, USA, Germany, Korea together make the bulk.
http://www.worldometers.info/cars/
Every one of these companies is public. Meaning they
sell shares. Because they are public corporations, their financial records are open.
Dealers prefer cars to be held by the makers rather than pay debt service for units on their lots.
GregT on Sat, 17th May 2014 9:35 am
Hmmm,
I’m not seeing any rotting abandoned cars here. They all look brand new. Just like a couple of lots full of cars in the city here where I live. I suspect that they are all waiting to be shipped off to dealerships where they will be sold.
dolanbaker on Sat, 17th May 2014 10:26 am
Greg, I think that the point is that cars are being made faster than they are being sold and they have overflowed the usual stowage places which means that many “new” cars could easily be already a year old before the first owner gets the keys. A situation that has clearly been demonstrated in Europe with the recent change in the requirements for daylight running lights to be fitted to all cars made after the summer of 2012. There are a lot of cars registered in 2013 without them.
Plantagenet on Sat, 17th May 2014 10:35 am
Time for a **Buy one, get one free** sale!
GregT on Sat, 17th May 2014 10:37 am
Dolan,
That may very well be, but I just don’t see auto manufacturers building cars to rot, as the article implies. They would go out of business rather quickly, I would think.
bobinget on Sat, 17th May 2014 11:27 am
If you are in doubt about when a car was made and where, VIN numbers tells all:
http://www.edmunds.com/driving-tips/making-sense-of-your-vin.html
bobinget on Sat, 17th May 2014 11:29 am
Oh, if Zero Hedge says it’s May, 2014, check first, this will be one of his first completely accurate statements.
Northwest Resident on Sat, 17th May 2014 11:44 am
GregT — I think it is very possible that some of the car manufacturers are stuck between a rock and a hard spot. They can’t sell many of the cars they are producing, so you see where they put them. They can’t stop producing the cars or even cut back significantly on car production because that would put their trained employees, their factories and their many suppliers out of business — not to mention that it would be HUGE financial news. A lot of jobs are tied to the auto manufacturing industry. I assume that companies like GM and others are tapped into a short term cash supply that enables them to continue production at such a loss, the goal being to keep up appearances — you know, maintain the illusion. We see that many major and/or minor retailers are either going out of business or closing a lot of their stores nationwide. And yet, they continue to order and stockpile warehouses full of product — probably for the same reasons the car industry just keeps churning them out. When the retailers — including auto retailers — stop buying from the manufacturers because they don’t have buyers for those products, the game ends and consequences begin in earnest. Just a more-or-less semi-informed point of view based on what I’ve read …
dolanbaker on Sat, 17th May 2014 12:29 pm
GregT – That may very well be, but I just don’t see auto manufacturers building cars to rot, as the article implies. They would go out of business rather quickly, I would think.
I agree, this is not the first time cars have had to be stockpiled because production got out of sync with consumption. Back in the early 1980s some cars were stored for nearly four years before going to market, the dealers had to sell them as secondhand!
jjhman on Sat, 17th May 2014 12:55 pm
I simply can’t take this article seriously. I suspect the author simply has no concept of how many cars are sold daily, monthly, yearly. I’ve seen these huge lots in California over the years. My best guest is that they are simply “surge tanks”. The manufacturers get their best cost structure building at a constant rate, the cars sell in up and down cycles.
Technically it is clear the author knows nothing about cars. These vehicles can sit outside for a full year and show absolutely no degradation.
As to the comment about the engine internals rusting as the oil drains down; I have easily started old engines that had sat for several years. Oil simply doesn’t leave a lubricated surface unless you use considerable effort to remove it, even after many years.
When statements are so blandly made that are so blatently wrong one has to dismiss the entire article as worthless.
GregT on Sat, 17th May 2014 12:59 pm
None of those pictures show more than a few thousand cars guys. Nissan in the US alone, sells around 100,000 vehicles per month.
http://nissannews.com/en-US/nissan/usa/channels/U-S-Sales-Reports
I’m going to have to research this one a bit further, cause so far, I’m not buying it.
Mike999 on Sat, 17th May 2014 1:30 pm
Exactly. The Population of America is 300 Million People. To feed that market you can either stockpile cars to meet demand, or you can have wait times of 3 months or more.
Mike999 on Sat, 17th May 2014 1:32 pm
Build on demand would have long long wait times. If you were told you had to wait 3-6 months to buy a car, you go to a dealer with a car on the lot.
See the conflict? Build on demand, and LOSE a Sale.
Roman on Sat, 17th May 2014 2:09 pm
Useless economy producing useless shit. Anyone who uses a car only for personal transportation wants their kids to die of starvation.
baptised on Sat, 17th May 2014 3:01 pm
Henry Ford was right when he believed in paying his workers enough to buy what they built.
baptised on Sat, 17th May 2014 3:04 pm
Everyone of those cars in every photo. Will be wrecked by an IDIOT on a cell phone! Maybe another reason why they want outlaw them while driving?
Bandits on Sat, 17th May 2014 3:08 pm
Amazing, some people can’t believe their own eyes so try to convince everyone that the above is normal. Was it “normal” ten years ago? Do you honestly believe car manufacturers are stockpiling vehicles because “they are flying out the door”.
Are sales up year on year over the last ten years? Do you think a vehicle manufacturer would have a problem if they couldn’t make enough vehicles to meet demand. Do you really think buying land to stockpile cars is normal. If car manufacturers were selling more than they could make they would increase production, they would hire more people not retrench them, they would open new factories, they would open more dealerships not close them.
What you see in those pictures is debt. It’s a pretence of BAU, it’s the veil or normality being sold to the masses.
Shaved Monkey on Sat, 17th May 2014 5:14 pm
The Car industry run on subsidies.
Big City Accountants would do the maths on building, trashing/ storing, selling recycling V subsidy, profit, employment (not the companies concern but the governments handing out the subsidies)to deliver maximum CEO’s salaries and share dividends.
Australia is ending its subsidy and the car industry is closing down in a few year.
The end of GM Ford and Toyota manufacture in Australia (Nissan closed about a decade ago)
They expect massive unemployment and flow on effects to components industry and even triggering recession in at least 2 states.
1/3 of the ex Nissan workers still haven’t found work after nearly a decade, so it should be interesting times.
Governments having to juggle car industry subsidies against dole payments, corporate welfare V human welfare.
End of growth costs money.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Sat, 17th May 2014 5:15 pm
Guys, channel stuffing is the same old song and dance we are seeing throughout the rest of the financial system. It is the distortions of market and price discovery. It is part of the Ponzi scheme financial system and further relates to “zerohedge saying” “BTFD” which is nothing more than casino economics. That is what this has come to a big casino. When the ship was sinking in the past in places like Rome you had very similar activities. When productive activity marginalizes casino economics takes over.
westexas on Sat, 17th May 2014 5:35 pm
Here are some global sales numbers, which does not address the inventory question though. However, it appears that normal inventory in the US is around 60 days of sales, although it can hit over 100.
In any case, at 60 days of sales, auto inventories globally would be at about 14 million, while at 120 days of sales, auto inventories globally would be at about 28 million.
Global auto sales hit record high of 82.8 million
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101321938
Annual Global Auto Sales
2013: 82.8 million
2012: 79.5 million
2011: 76.7 million
2010: 73.2 million
Source: IHS Automotive
Makati1 on Sat, 17th May 2014 6:31 pm
When I bought my first new car in 1965, you went to the dealer and looked at the model you liked. Then you picked the color and extras you wanted. It was then actually manufactured and shipped to your dealer in a few weeks. No lot full of cars waiting for buyers.
Why some here cannot believe that a manufacturer could make thousands of cars, and let them rot, doesn’t understand the bail-out mentality of today. How many auto makers have gotten taxpayer bail outs in the last 10 years? Answer: most of them.
NR understands ‘total systems’, and knows why they cannot stop even if they want to. Obviously ‘total systems’ is a problem with most on here. Unable to look at ALL of the ramifications of a decision.
dolanbaker on Sat, 17th May 2014 6:48 pm
“The problems then just keep on mounting up. In the end, the unsold cars that are say 2 years old will have no alternative but to be either crushed up, dismantled and/or their parts recycled.”
This is one part of the story I just don’t buy! These cars would just end up on the secondhand market as “ex demonstrators” with extremely low mileage, I have one.
Yeti on Sat, 17th May 2014 7:16 pm
Saw this on 0hedge years ago. The site where dumb people go to get dumber.
I was one for awhile, but I’ve been clean for years now, and better for it.
MrEnergyCzar on Sat, 17th May 2014 8:48 pm
Is this a joke article? Global car sales are rising, not falling. I thought the photo of the car lot next to the cargo ship was funny. They have to park the cars somewhere….
Joe Clarkson on Sun, 18th May 2014 1:10 am
This article is stupid. I actually looked at the Dunalk Marine Terminal near Baltimore. Looks just like a large transshipment facility.
This is how the Port Authority describes it
“Over the past several years, Baltimore ranked as one of the nation’s top three automobile-handling ports. Several auto processors maintain operations at Dundalk, which offers 225 acres of storage. Dundalk’s direct rail access also allows unit trains to routinely deliver dozens of units of farm and/or construction equipment to the terminal at once. Combined with rail access provided by Norfolk Southern and CSXT, Dundalk’s size makes it ideal for handling large breakbulk and project cargo.”
DaveR on Sun, 18th May 2014 6:12 am
There is some merit in what is being said, but not as alarming as presented. First this is buildout time of the year when dealers load up on current model year inventory to sustain them until the new models are introduced, in the fall. Secondly when economies are slowing inventories build. Automotive News tracks inventory levels and while higher, not alarming. Thirdly the severe winter drastically slowed retail sales this spring. And finally inventory buildup on Citroen and Peugeot, who cares. And double finally, when you have to pay workers 80% of their salary when you lay them off, yes it is cheaper to roll the dice and continue to build cars. Everyone calm down, take a deep breath, it will be OK.
Davy, Hermann, MO on Sun, 18th May 2014 7:27 am
DaveR – yes it is cheaper to roll the dice and continue to build cars.
DaveR, tell me what will happen when the bond market freaks over an ugly financial corrections. Who is going to buy cars when rates go up? Rates are at historic lows so what is the only way rates can go? Markets are repressed but this repression cannot go on indefinitely at some point a business cycle fluctuation will occur. Are you another member of the herd?
peterjames on Sun, 18th May 2014 8:01 am
Oddly enough, for quite a few of the pics, the guys were able to paint the car parking spots before the cars were parked. If you dont plan on making enough cars to fill the spots, why would you paint the spots. Secondly, I think the author has taken some leeway with pics from 2009, andpassing them of as now. At any one time, there are upwards of 25 million cars between factory and buyer, thats roughly enough to fill up 250 x 1 kilometre x 1 kilometre car parks.
Tonya on Sun, 18th May 2014 5:58 pm
The google space shots are years old. And most of the yards mentioned are shipment yards for vehicles being transferred from manufacturer to, often overseas point of sale. There might be the odd correct fact in this piece but in the main it’s Grade A BS
Elizabeth Rigdon on Sun, 18th May 2014 7:58 pm
Truly not a shred of actual journalism in this “article”. How does this stuff make its way onto a reputable news aggregator?
Becky Allen on Sun, 18th May 2014 9:44 pm
I desperately need a vehicle; my car was totaled. I swerved to avoid a headon collision and hit a car parked on the side of the road. I did not receive a citation; it was not my fault; however, I only had liability insurance. I recently had my second back surgery and had to retire early from teaching. Is there ANY way you can help me get one of the vehicles? It seems like such a waste; I could REALLY use one and will be forever grateful!
THANKS for your consideration
Becky Allen