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May 19, 2014
[Updated] Potemkin Parking Lots: How Many Hundreds of Thousands of Unsold New Cars Rot?
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.
Posted by gerardvanderleun at May 19, 2014 6:21 PM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.
Your Say
Instapundit has a link that says the ZeroHedge post is less than accurate.
Posted by: Mikey NTH at May 19, 2014 7:32 PM
Very tactful, Mikey.
I remember the first time I saw the story a few years back, and some of the photos were old then.
Posted by: TmjUtah at May 19, 2014 7:50 PM
I wonder that everytime I pass a new car dealer thats slammed to the rafters with rides. Who's buying all of them?
Posted by: ghostsniper at May 19, 2014 8:00 PM
"That Zero Hedge Article On Unsold Cars Is Bullshit" by Matt Hardigree
http://jalopnik.com/that-zero-hedge-article-on-unsold-cars-is-bullshit-1578124255
"I usually enjoy reading Zero Hedge because the insights are often interesting and I think pessimism is an underrated virtue these days. However, this guest article on unsold cars is so demonstrably false I had to take a break from my Sunday morning to dispute it."
"It is an admittedly appealing idea to think that automakers, unable to sell cars, are just wildly producing them and then dumping them around the world in an endless cycle of mass production hysteria. So much of the modern economy seems senseless and inexplicable, which is why an article like this seems to give some credence to the feeling many of us have inside that something is terribly wrong.
"The visuals are strong, the headline is clear, and you almost don't have to read the article to viscerally understand the problem. I, more than anyone, get the appeal of this story because it seems to largely rip off an article I wrote — including the images and headline — more than five years ago (which itself was largely a rehash of a Guardian article).
Posted by: Fat Man at May 19, 2014 9:04 PM
Spolisport.
Posted by: vanderleun at May 19, 2014 9:39 PM
What wangy-bot said, with more random adjectives.
Posted by: ed in texas at May 20, 2014 4:40 AM
Posted by: Alex G at May 20, 2014 5:21 AM
Warning Warning don't click on ewangella link.
There be dragons and Wurzel Zwerge.
The cars are a base layer for a mammoth black-topping project that will cause China, or maybe it is Russia, to boast the largest parking lot in the universe. This according to Joni Mitchell — who has never been caught in a lie. Or given a hard punch in the face. Yet.
Posted by: chasmatic at May 20, 2014 8:49 AM
I'd hardly call Russia or China "paradise", and I'd also imagine that there are plenty of places in both that could be markedly improved by a generous helping of parking lots. Over Lenin's tomb, for example, or Mao's portrait.
Posted by: waltj at May 20, 2014 9:33 AM
walt: I'll go you one further. I dislike Joni Mitchell. wasn't worth a shit back in the day, didn't get any better. She and James Taylor. I'd rather listen to Otis or Wilson than either one of them. While I'm at it, dissing all the old hippy dippy soft-as-a-sneaker-fulla-shit musicians, throw Arlo Guthrie under the bus too. Just like his commie old man. Whoa, drifting there, tighten up on the old cable tow.
Posted by: chasmatic at May 20, 2014 9:58 PM