Watch The Damaged Cars Of The Stricken Container Ship Hoegh Osaka Drive Their Way To Safety

Earlier this month, the cargo ship Hoegh Osaka was purposefully run aground off the coast of the Isle of Wight after developing a rather concerning list. Shipping news isn’t something that would ever interest us normally, but the cargo of the vessel did: it contained 1400 luxury cars. With the ship safely back at port after the list was reduced to five degrees, the operation to remove the cargo is now underway, and while some cars were pranged in the incident (try not to wince at the sight of the badly dented Range Rover below!), the lashings for most vehicles held.

However, these motors aren’t out of the woods yet. In fact, the whole lot could end up being scrapped anyway, despite the fact many appear entirely undamaged. Parallels have been drawn with a similar incident in 2006, in which a ship containing 4700 Mazdas partially capsized in the North Pacific. The issue was that - similar to the Hoegh Osaka incident - the ship’s cargo had been sat at an extreme angle of lean for three weeks, which led to fears of unseen damage to the car’s compontents.

Rather than face the possibility of legal action through any road accidents the cars might have gotten into in the future, the desicion was taken to scrap every car. We’ll have to wait and see if this cargo - which also includes a Rolls Royce Ghost and several Porsches - ends up going to the scrapper.