Marine

29.4, vessel list

US: Mazda Motor Corporation scrapped more than 4,000 new cars involved in a shipping mishap in the Pacific two years ago. Vehicle carrier Cougar Ace , with 4,703 vehicles held securely in straps on board, developed a list in bad weather and drifted for several weeks. The list was eventually corrected and Mazda, which said it did not know which of the cars had been damaged, decided to build a “disassembly” line in Portland, Oregon, where metals such as platinum were separated from catalytic converters, air bags inflated and accessories such as CD players and alloy wheels removed and destroyed. Finally the cars, worth an estimated $100mn, were crushed and shredded, to be sent back to Japan for recycling into cars again. Mazda did not want a repeat of the so-called “Katrina syndrome”, when thousands of new cars of all makes, salvaged from the New Orleans floods three years ago, were given superficial paint jobs and sold to people in Latin America, who found sand and mud in the engines and electronics circuits corroded by floodwater.