Half A Million Vehicles Could Be Scrapped After Hurricane Harvey

With the awful, catastrophic flooding in Texas pinned to news channels all over the world, a related story has emerged alongside the disaster - that hundreds of thousands of cars could be reduced to scrap by the storm damage

Matt Kimberley

Updated: 30 Aug 2017

Up to half a million cars, vans, trucks and motorcycles could be sent to scrapyards in Texas because of the state’s terrible floods.

Hundreds of thousands of vehicles have been submerged in the unprecedented flood water, which is filled not just with alligators, but sewage and other stuff you don’t want on your seats or in your electrics. The damage to cars’ systems will, inevitably, be terminal for most of them.

Some quarter of a million cars were scrapped after Hurricane Sandy hit New York five years ago, but CNBC News says that the number of cars per household is ‘much higher’ in Houston, even if its population is smaller.

That could mean a huge problem for the auto insurance industry, which will have to pay out billions for replacement vehicles. At the same time, says CNBC, there’s the likelihood that people will buy near-worthless flood-damaged cars from salvage yards, clean them up and sell them on for big profit with fraudulent paperwork gained via one of several ways of cheating the system. One analyst calls it ‘inevitable.’

If you live in the Houston area, we’re especially interested in what you make of the situation. Are you concerned about water-damaged cars with fraudulent titles? Or is it not even registering on the scale of importance right now, as homeowners battle to protect their families and possessions?

Comments

Aaaaand a big part of those cars are going to be imported to my country. Smh

Why would they do that? That’s cheating.

I live in Cypress Texas, and fortunately where I live, the water didnt get into our house from Harvey, but my neighborhood is filled with flooded cars. The medians and roadsides had a lot of cars with water inside the cabin, and in some cases, over the hood. I am very lucky where I live, and I was able to park my car up my driveway to avoid damage. A LOT of people weren’t so luck, espically a little further south towards downtown Houston. Even just a couple miles down Barker Cypress is completely underwater. In regards to this post, after every flood, it seems a million car dealers pop up, and there are thousands of water damaged cars that these crooked dealers try to sell people. Never buy a car except from a trusted dealer for months after a big flood here, because the scams are through the roof. Unfortunately, many people who lost their cars will be tricked into buying these damaged ones and getting screwed over by these dealers. It happens every time.

I’ve been occasoinally checking the twitter account of McLaren Houston (@McLarenHOU)
They’d packed all of their stock into the showroom ready for the storm, and from the rainfall websites I checked, the road they’re on seemed to get about 13 inches deep in water. So it’s looking like their entire inventory could well be scrap by the time they can get back to the building.

There’s also Ford, BMW, Mercedes and Audi dealerships on the same road, which I suspect will have met a similar fate