They said they were going to touch up the lightly damaged ones.... http://www.autounleashed.com/370-bmws-damaged-in-cargo-ship-incident
that Black M3 still looks good . . . . . woah . . . I've hear about this - but this is first pics I've seen. I ordered a car once but never got it . . . . it fell off of the train . . . . Thanks for the pics.
The New York Region arranged for a tour of the VDC/Port in early April. We saw some of the cars that had not yet been crushed. My tour guide said the ship took a really severe list and cars broke free from their mountings. He said they could have lost the whole boat. Cars with light damage (I seem to remember less than 3% of value of the car) could be repaired. But the cars we saw were almost unrecognizable as BMWs or anything else. They said they were disposing of the cars (full crushed and documented) a few at a time. Those pics do not reflect the real damage done. I think some of the repaired cars will be BMWNA demos and then sold to dealers. Even regular cars might have minor damage and dings. The port does repair them and send them along, without a need to document it (unless major). The folks there seemed to take a lot of pride in the work they do to bring the cars off the boats and ultimately to the trucks that bring 'em to the dealership. There are not really any photos of the tour, because they (the port) requested that none be taken inside the facility (except where we had lunch) and outside in the public parking lot.
A link to the NY newsletter about the tour starting on page 10: http://www.nybmwcca.org/newsletters/Spring2008BMW.pdf The photo of all the attendees on the ramp was taken inside the facility (obviously permission was given [I hope] ).
How are these cars parked/stored when they are in transport? It is like they are next to bowling balls, bookshelves, battering rams, etc...
I was under the impression they are tied down inside the ship. I would assume similar to the way they are tied down on car carrier trucks. The list of the boat was so severe that at least one car broke free, pushing into the other cars and started a chain reaction. I suppose an analogy of a pinball machine might be appropriate.
When this all happened back in January, there was some discussion on other boards about it. Seems that it happened at the dock, and not on the high seas. Among the casualties were the first group of the new M3s to come to the US, which were destined for track use at the Performance Center, or so the story went at the time.
The VDC guys said it happened at sea. Looking at the cars this wasn't just a hard docking. The cars in the garage were pretty mushed. Yes, M3s, 1 Series, Euro Delivery cars and customer order cars. My local sales person (Barbara at BMW Darien 203 -662- 2040) had a customer ordered 7 Series. The car was toast. The reorder was expedited into the factory.
