A field of BMW and Mini cars totalling nearly 3000 are gathering dust and grime on Canada’s west coast.
A severe “ice storm” in early 2015 at Halifax port on Canada’s east coast resulted in Transport Canada issuing a recall for the BMW and Mini vehicles which were caught by the weather as they were being unloaded and parked.
“Exposure to standing water and salt for an extended period” was the reason given by the department at the time, which one dealer employee describes as excessive.
The recall notice at the time demanded “Due to potential concerns about long term vehicle quality, all affected vehicles will ultimately be removed from service”.
The department executed the recall as a precaution due to “the lubrication of some internal components within the steering rack may have been exposed to excessive water or salt” which it said could have resulted in “higher than normal steering effort or steering binding, increasing the risk of a crash causing injury and/or damage to property”.
The vehicles have remained stashed at ADESA salvage yard in Vancouver, British Columbia, but one BMW dealer staff member, whose alias in a Jalopnik story’s comments feed is “SkoonSupra”, remembers the recall vividly.
“I personally performed many of the checks on these cars at our dealership. Initially, the recall was a simple “check and report” style recall where some cars would be taken off the road and some given back to customers based on severity of the damage we found,” they said on Friday.
“That changed about a month after the original recall was released and turned into the situation we have now, where all the involved cars were declared total loss by BMW and Transport Canada,” they explain.
SkoonSupra says most of the BMWs and Minis were already in customers’ driveways.
“The majority of these cars had already been delivered to retailers and some even sold and delivered to customers by the time the initial recall was released, so by then the cars were already spread across the country.
“After being condemned, each car was picked up by a transport company and sent away never to be seen again. Now I know where they all went!”
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