Filed under: Plants/Manufacturing, Mazda
Mazda creates disassembly line in wake of Cougar Ace capsizing
If you've ever smashed up a car in an accident, you've probably had the unpleasant experience of dealing with insurance agents who assess what can be saved and what has to be written off. In most cases, insurance companies might find ways to save as much as they can. But the insurers of the Cougar Ace want to make sure every last nut and bolt of some $100 million worth of new Mazdas are completely scrapped.
The Cougar Ace, as you'll recall, was a ship full of Mazda automobiles that nearly capsized in the Pacific Ocean two years ago. Although the cars were securely strapped down, Mazda deemed it impossible to determine the extent of the potential damage caused to each of the vehicles on board, so rather than risk the cars making their way onto the market – like many Katrina-damaged vehicles from New Orleans three years ago – the company and its insurers decided each car had to be scrapped. The process of destroying 4703 vehicles, however, proved to be quite a challenge. Airbags had to be triggered, wheels sliced and tires purposely punctured. For the airbag process alone, it would have taken half an hour for each car, so Mazda developed a device to inflate them all at once on each car, saving countless hours of work. The result is a seemingly counter-intuitive disassembly line turns the nearly 5000 new cars into metal shards. Follow the jump to read more about the process.
[Source: The Wall Street Journal]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
John Johnson 4:35PM (4/29/2008)
DO A BARREL ROLL
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DannyBoyUK 4:50PM (4/29/2008)
More like Return of the FailBoat!
Victor 6:35PM (4/29/2008)
Keisuke, your job is to crash these 4000 cars into the wall really fast, one at a time..
Menice 4:40PM (4/29/2008)
this is an amazing display of waste.
such a shame, they'd rather have the insurance money and pay to have all this work done.
I understand the ramifications to donating, but there had to be another way.
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Tourian 4:44PM (4/29/2008)
Of course there's another way. They could have risked lawsuits over people feeling cheated for buying a "damaged, salvaged" car that was "underwater" on a "sunken" boat. People sue big car companies, and WIN, for less and are awarded huge sums for their "trouble" I'm sure Mazda wants a piece of that action.
Kaptain75329 4:58PM (4/29/2008)
"Of course there's another way. They could have risked lawsuits over people feeling cheated for buying a "damaged, salvaged" car that was "underwater" on a "sunken" boat. People sue big car companies, and WIN, for less and are awarded huge sums for their "trouble" I'm sure Mazda wants a piece of that action." - Tourian
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is precisely why Mazda has to destroy these cars. Tourian has it spot on. I'd go so far as to add that even if these cars had been sold at huge discounts with disclaimers burned onto the hoods, people would still sue if something ever went wrong with them. There's also the very likely possibility of far too many dealers trying to conceal the truth about these cars' collective history, which in turn carries the very real consequence of possibly damaging Mazda's reputation quite severely for more than a decade. That's not cheap, and I'm not talking about just money.
Mazda's reputation has been built on taking risks, not stupid chances. They did the right thing here - for the company, and for their customers.
B 5:09PM (4/29/2008)
I completely understand why each car had to be scrapped. But unless the car was actually underwater, couldn't at least a few things be saved.
I mean lets be honest, I'm sure there is a bunch of trim pieces that are almost impossible to damage (floor mats) that could be saved and sold. I realize that taking just the floor mats from each car wouldnt be worth the time, but maybe a few other parts like headrests or radios that, aside from physical smashing, are fairly hard to damage.
Maybe Mazda could have recouped a little of the cost if they had just taken these items from the cars.
Franz 5:29PM (4/29/2008)
@ B:
I was thinking the same thing, until I realized what a time consuming and labor intensive process that would be. That would mean workers actually getting into each car and removing screws and clips by hand to get trim bits out. I don't think it'd make any sense from an economic point of view.
tankd0g 5:43PM (4/29/2008)
There was absolutley no reason for them to destroy the individual parts of these cars. What the F*** could possibly be wrong with all 19,000 tires on those cars. What part on any of those cars could possibly be hiding a flaw that could not be spoted from a visual inspection that would be any worse than the millions of parts in junk yards right now. Monumental display of waste. I can't believe the ins. company agreed to this unless Mazda took a lesser settlement in order to keep these parts from being bought by a reman manufacturer and devaluing Mazda's parts retail devision.
Menice 6:17PM (4/29/2008)
i again understand why it had to be done,.. and what you all are saying about the lawsuits is obvious. people even complain when things are free.. but such destruction on a such a large scale is hard to swallow...
least it gets recycled with what they are doing and not like the boat blew up or anything.
gkoenig 12:32AM (4/30/2008)
I understanding the PR Robot's point about wanting to insure that the Mazdas never get into the hands of customers... But just before saying that, he lists off half a dozen uses for these vehicles that would have insured that "customers" never got a hold of them. Race cars, drift cars, vehicle extraction training aids, vocational shop training rigs, driving school cars (that will be gutted and roll caged anyhow).
Mazda could easily have taken those cars and sprinkled them across dozens of specialty users. They never would have ended up in customer's hands, they all could have been transfered under a contract that insured no post-sales support or other lawsuit issues and Mazda could have build a tremendous amount of brand loyalty.
Instead, they did the most wasteful, unimaginative and boring thing ever. Kudos on the blown opportunity...
coasterjob 4:55PM (4/30/2008)
I would have signed a public waiver for a free "drunken Mazda" and released any and all liability of the vehichle, that way it wouldnt had been a complete waste of resources....I agree, what a waste.
Todd 4:41PM (4/29/2008)
Here in Texas the dealers have "Hail Sales" all the time ( millions of five pound, softball size chunks of rain down from the sky onto new car dealerships ). Why doesn't Mazda have a "Drunk Captain Sale"?
Video of Texas hail:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZr8jXo1Uso
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CarlosMC 4:54PM (4/29/2008)
We had one of those recently, they're not very frequent, though.
Rususeruru 5:24PM (4/29/2008)
Awesome sale name.
VP 6:06PM (4/29/2008)
Here in Atlanta we have pollen sales. A local Nissan/Mazda dealership was advertising their first annual pollen sale in this morning's paper. It was worth a chuckle.
Rocketboy 4:47PM (4/29/2008)
Classy move. Better to make sure that everything is destroyed than risk potentially damaged parts from getting into the hands of the public.
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bduddy 4:54PM (4/29/2008)
Stupid, stupid, stupid. Donate them to the poor, or use them in-house, or something. Why do insurance companies run everything these days?
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sledge 5:02PM (4/29/2008)
Because asshole people go out and sue companies for selling them "damaged" goods. I think Tourian has summed it up very well in a comment above me. Donating these parts is just not worth getting sued for millions of dollars.
Honestly, as much as I think it is a waste, sometimes the right thing to do for a company cannot happen due to our our litigious society.
Richard S. 5:02PM (4/29/2008)
They could have hired some "chop-shop" experts from New York, Miami, L.A, Detroit and some other inner-cities. Those thousands of cars would have been disassembled in no time.
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