A fire in the Italian port of Savona has destroyed hundreds of Maseratis awaiting export. The Local’s Italian edition reports:
After sea waters rose and flooded the port last night, including the two parking areas, local media reports that the salt water caused car batteries to explode and catch fire in the early hours of this morning.
Most of the vehicles destroyed in the blaze were brand new Maserati. Several hundred were reportedly stored at the terminal ready for export to the Middle East.
. . .
The car terminal fire is still ongoing, with the port reportedly enveloped in smoke and ‘continuous’ explosions coming from inside the parking area.
Four teams of firefighters are on the scene and the port remains closed.
There’s more at the link.
Here’s video footage of the fire.
Each of those vehicles probably represents at least $100,000 going up in smoke, if you include lost profits, etc. I hope Maserati’s insurance company has plenty of money on hand!
Peter
Those are salt water soaked Maseratis burning.
If the water reached the batteries, the cars are totaled for insurance purposes, as that constitutes being flooded. Actually, if it enters the cabin, that is normally enough, as repair gets expensive. The fire merely makes them 100% unrecoverable.
From the haphazard distribution of the vehicles, it would appear that there was a considerable flow of water, several feet deep at least.
Methinks Maserati will be looking for a new storage/distribution location, as no insurance company would cover that area for an affordable rate in the future.
One hopes that Maserati was covered sufficiently to recoup their production costs at a minimum. If not, they may be toast.
Ouch… All those mechanics out of a job now…
Maserati stock holders must be rejoicing, and no those are not "Salt water soaked" Maserati's burning, it is gasoline burning, unaffected by salt water, and effectively roasting the cars
If they are like the Maserati CRV I saw this morning, then good riddance.
It looked just like every other Honda, Hyundai, Ford, Chevy, Dodge, Porsche, BMW, and Mercedes CRV on the road. I swear the same person has designed every other car company's vehicles.
So at least in the US Maserati sells 3 models 1) Ghibli a "small" 2 door coupe at 75K a pop (list), 2) the Quattroporte a performance sedan at 105K and 3) the SUV Levante at about 76K. And yes their SUV looks exactly like every other 5 place small SUV except its grill has a trident and looks like it sucked on a lemon like the old Ford Edsel. So yes serious monetary loss. The Ghibli and the Quattroporte are pretty, but as usual with Italian cars they're a mechanical nightmare. And who the hell wants a bland undependable overpriced econ SUV?