Hundreds of 5-year-old municipal vehicles found in Miami that were never used - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

TwitchKitty · #1 05-01-2012, 01:58 PM

Hundreds of 5-year-old municipal vehicles found in Miami that were never used

Quote:

Have you ever bought a brand new cars only to forget where you put it? How about 300 of them? Probably not – unless you're Miami-Dade County, which was recently reunited with 298 vehicles it bought brand new between 2006 and 2007.

The county "discovered" this fleet of no-mileage vehicles after reading about them in a Spanish-language newspaper there (see the source for more images). Most of the misplaced motorcade is made up of Toyota Prius hybrids whose warranties either expired with very few miles on the odo or will very soon.

Looking to save some face, the county has rushed at least 123 of the hybrids into service. The Toyota warranty covered the hybrid bits for eight years or 100,000 miles, but we're not sure if that covers cars parked for five of those eight. We're also not sure what that much time in Miami heat and humidity does to an unused hybrid powertrain, but it can't be good.

The county, as you probably guessed, is looking into how it lost so many cars. The leading theory is that they might be part of Carlos Alvarez's time as mayor. He was the mayor during the period the Toyotas were purchased, but a 2011 recall election successfully removed him from office. Apparently the voters "felt, among other reasons, that he had been behind multiple acts of misappropriation of funds."

Another example of your tax dollars at work. But hey, Prius is all about saving gas. How better to save gas than to park it?

Jim B. · #2 05-01-2012, 02:15 PM

Miami-Dade County bought six years ago hundreds of hybrid cars, police cars and vans - with zero miles! - In 2006, but 170 of them have never been used
...

Let me nab a free new '06 Crown Vic Police Interceptor, one of them with the "Street Appearance Package".

Like this SAP beauty:

lutzTD · #3 05-01-2012, 02:29 PM

yep straight from Uncle Bobs auto brokerage to Brother-in-law storage.....

Dee8go · #4 05-01-2012, 02:37 PM

Wonder what kind of shape they're in after sitting all that time?

TnBob · #5 05-01-2012, 02:38 PM

Some transportation manager or managers need to go back to micky D's.

MTI · #6 05-01-2012, 03:04 PM

Tires are likely to be slightly out of round . . . the Prius does have relays that disconnect the 12V after a week or so of non-use and the 210V batteries are disconnected when you turn the car off. With a new 12V, the car may just start up in gas mode, whch apparently some may have since they were put into service.

SwampYankee · #7 05-01-2012, 03:59 PM

But...the government knows best and always knows what its doing!?!?

It falls into the same category as if they don't spend it this year, they lose it from their budget next year. I bet they had the money budgeted for the vehicles so they spent it because they had to, regardless of need.

SirNik84 · #8 05-01-2012, 04:35 PM

They may be sitting on a gold mine. If they don't want those cars I'm sure other departments across the country would pick them up. They are after all the last great American land yacht.

Police hoard Crown Vic cop cars before Ford kills them

barry123400 · #9 05-01-2012, 05:19 PM

I have seen and know that far far worse than this goes on. Unfortunatly It would be too hot a potato to discuss openly even if it is history now.

I feel I might actually get a visit from some government agency if I did. Years ago I lost a contract because they knew someone let the cat out of the bag.

It was not me but I was in the vast storage area at about that time.Inspecting some electronic/electrical systems.

I think they used a blanket approach since they may not have found the actual person that caused them the grief.

. Anyone that had accessed that area over a specific time frame perhaps. Actually I could not have talked about it back then as I was totally unaware of what was going on until I heard about it years later.

I did wonder why the contract was cancelled for no apparent reason to me at the time though. I was trying to figure out a reason as I was given none. What was going on makes the subject of this thread almost nothing in comparison. I also wondered when I found out how long it had it been going on.

Nate · #10 05-01-2012, 07:02 PM

I've seen the DRMO yards in Kuwait and Iraq. I've watched $500k worth of brand new up armored equipment cut up for scrap because "the paperwork to ship them home with us is too hard"

I've witnessed an order for 4 pieces of medical equipment turn into 4 pallets of the same product, with a 60k price tag to boot.

But hey, the waste fraud and abuse phone lines are never busy, and you'll "never" be put on hold...

~Nate

t walgamuth · #11 05-01-2012, 11:22 PM

i tried to snopes this and could not get it to digest.

I also searched it and did not find a single source that looked to me like a reliable source.

It seems like there must be more to the story.

Pooka · #12 05-02-2012, 01:33 AM

According to NPR there is a lot more to this story.

The County went on a buying spree because they got a great deal on 908 cars. The money they saved from buying in bulk was enough to make up for storing the cars. There were 17,000 people that had cars checked out to them, so 908 was just a normal replacement volume.

Then came a major revamping of 'who gets to drive a car' rules and the country found they had a lot more cars than they needed. So they stored them.

They have also maintained them, starting and driving each car a bit every two weeks. They need to replace about nine cars a month, so with the 157 they currently have in storage they will be needing to buy more in 17.4 months.

And at least one Country Commissioner has been looking into this since about 2010, but after checking out the situation it seemed it was cheaper to keep on keeping on.

More details at NPR.org.

Pooka · #13 05-02-2012, 01:35 AM

This reminds me of the War Department's buying 500,000 Purple Heart awards in 1945. They figured the supply would be good for several months since the invasion of Japan was nigh.

They are still giving out medals from that batch of 500,000.

TnBob · #14 05-02-2012, 02:41 AM

300,000 + were issued during the Viet Nam era.

t walgamuth · #15 05-02-2012, 05:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pooka

According to NPR there is a lot more to this story.

The County went on a buying spree because they got a great deal on 908 cars. The money they saved from buying in bulk was enough to make up for storing the cars. There were 17,000 people that had cars checked out to them, so 908 was just a normal replacement volume.

Then came a major revamping of 'who gets to drive a car' rules and the country found they had a lot more cars than they needed. So they stored them.

They have also maintained them, starting and driving each car a bit every two weeks. They need to replace about nine cars a month, so with the 157 they currently have in storage they will be needing to buy more in 17.4 months.

And at least one Country Commissioner has been looking into this since about 2010, but after checking out the situation it seemed it was cheaper to keep on keeping on.

More details at NPR.org.

Ahah! Now that makes sense. This world we have with all the 24-7 "news" organizations sure leads to a lot of fake "crisis reporting".