At this rate we could just about have a dedicated Felicity Ace section. It’s creeping towards two weeks since the cargo ship carrying Lamborghinis, Porsches and other Volkswagen cars caught fire.
The good news is fire crews look to have extinguished most of the blaze. Reports and images show smoke is still coming from the vents (not the good kind), but not in the volume seen earlier in the week.
Tugboats should be arriving shortly to begin dragging the vessel back to the nearest port.
Several electric cars onboard kept the fire burning for days as fire crews couldn’t properly deal with the lithium-ion batteries. Instead, it looks as if they let the fire run its course.
As for the cars onboard, they’ll almost certainly all be scrapped.
It’s a massive sucker-punch to Lamborghini. A number of Aventadors are on the ship and the model has been discontinued.
Lamborghini America CEO Andrea Baldi says he is contacting suppliers to see if the Aventador can re-enter production for replacements.
“The car is sold out, so there is always a possibility out of 563 units that some cancellation can allow an Aventador replacement,” he said.
“But I prefer to hope for the time being that at least the few Aventadors on the ship will be safe.”
Unfortunately for Baldi, damage looks to extend the full length of the ship. The hull appears to have taken the brunt of it, suggesting it’s likely here where the fire started.
Skytek software development company, which deals with reporting the situation about the ship, estimates the damage of the vessel to be $24.5 million. The estimated value of the 3,965 Volkswagen cars could be well over $500 million.
In fairness, that’s really the only thing keeping this story rather interesting.
As one of the ship’s engineers told Autoweek: “Because they were Lamborghinis and Bentleys, everyone’s getting excited. If it had been iron ore, no one would have cared.”
