100 BMWs trashed in US train crash

Whenever something the size of a freight train crashes, it’s always going to make one hell of a mess.

And when its cargo consists of around 100 brand new BMWs SUVs, the resulting scene looks like the housewives of Toorak and Vaucluse decided to hold an impromptu demolition derby.

The train was less than 100 kilometres from BMW’s factory in Spartanburg, South Carolina when it derailed, immediately turning dozens of X3s, X4s, X5s and X6s into scrap, though some unkind souls might say the accident actually improved the styling of BMW’s polarising coupe-SUVs.

As you can see in the video, with the cars already heavily damaged, the clean-up crew wasn’t interested in being gentle with the expensive cargo, using excavators and bulldozers to arrange the wreckage into neat piles, in what must have been an extremely enjoyable day at work.

If you’re after a new B58 3.0-litre turbo six for your project car, we suspect there will be some cheap half-cuts appearing in South Carolina in the near future.

It’s by no means the only example of car carrying going awry, however. In early 2015 a 51,000 ton cargo ship carrying almost 1300 cars from Jaguar, Land Rover and Mini was intentionally run aground on the south coast of England having developed a “severe list”

One of the more famous incidents of recent times was a collision between two cargo ships in the North Sea in December 2002. One of them was carrying almost 3000 BMWs, Saabs and Volvos and sunk to the sea floor in less than 90 minutes, though thankfully the crew all escaped without injury.