A huge cargo ship carrying 4,000 luxury sports vehicles, including Lamborghini, Porsche, Audis and Bentley, for a total of $ 400 million, sank off the coast of Europe on Tuesday.
Felicity Ace, a 60,000-ton merchant ship that caught fire on Feb. 17, ran aground about 253 miles from the Azores, a Portuguese archipelago in the middle of the Atlantic.
The owner of the ship, MOL Ship Management Singapore Pte Ltd, said the Panama-flagged ship sank at about 9 a.m. local time.
Felicity Ace began to lean to one side and absorb water after igniting. There were no casualties as all 22 sailors on board were rescued after the fire started last month.
There were 3,965 Volkswagen AG vehicles on board, including 1,100 ports, according to Bloomberg. The ship sailed from Emden, Germany, on February 10 and headed for Davisville, Rhode Island.
Volkswagen’s parent company produces its own Volkswagen brand, as well as Porsche, Audi and Lamborghini models, all of which were on board, according to an internal company email seen from the store.
While Volkswagen declined to estimate the value of the luxury cars that were lost, an accident insurance group told The Wall Street Journal that it valued the vehicles at about $ 401 million.
Car dealerships in Michigan and Rhode Island were called by nervous customers who were watching the news of the ship.
A man tweets that his Porsche Boxster Spyder was on the doomed ship. The base models of the vehicle sell for $ 100,000.
European carmakers declined to discuss how many vehicles and models were on board, but Porsche customers in the United States were contacted by their dealers, the company said.
“We are already working to replace any car affected by the accident, and the first new cars will be built soon,” Angus Fitton, vice president of public relations at Porsche Cars North America, Inc., told the Associated Press in an email.