It’s not often you hear about a car company actively trying to stop the sale of its own cars, but that’s exactly what BMW is doing right now. Specifically, it’s trying to halt the sale of 260 brand-new cars that were aboard a cargo ship that caught fire last year.
This saga began when the Fremantle Highway, a Japanese-owned container ship, started to burn off the coast of the Netherlands last July while en route from the port of Bremerhaven in Germany to Port Said in Egypt. Over 3,700 vehicles were on board at the time. While the cause of the fire hasn’t been determined, suggestions that it was an electric car’s battery pack have been debunked.
Following the fire, the ship was towed to the Dutch port of Eemshaven for repairs, where its cargo – some of it noticeably charred – was moved onto dry land. Apparently, 260 BMWs – mostly comprising cars from the 3- and 4-series families, based on images – that supposedly made it out relatively or entirely unscathed were acquired by a group of Rotterdam-based companies and businesspeople, via an insurance company based in Taiwan.
This consortium planned to sell them on, something BMW filed an injunction against in December 2023. The case is now being fought out in Dutch courts. The Rotterdam-based group argues that the 260 cars were effectively undamaged, with a bit of soot on their paint the extent of the fire’s effects on them.
BMW, meanwhile, maintains that there is an “enormous” risk associated with the cars, which were declared a total loss. It says their wiring, paint, and metalwork all sustained damage, and points to the fact that Mercedes and Audi, both of which also had cars on the ship, sent them to recycling facilities.
The compromise suggested by the group trying to sell the cars is that they’re sold into markets with “less stringent” quality standards, thereby supposedly minimizing BMW’s reputational damage, according to Northern Times, but BMW has rejected this idea. A final ruling is expected on 15 July.
In conclusion, the situation involving the 260 BMW cars aboard the cargo ship that caught fire last year is a complex and contentious one. BMW is taking a firm stance in trying to prevent the sale of these vehicles, citing significant damage sustained during the fire. The outcome of the legal battle in Dutch courts will ultimately determine the fate of these cars and the potential impact on BMW’s reputation. It will be interesting to see how this situation unfolds and what implications it may have for the automotive industry as a whole.