Skip to main content

Great Train Robberies (in Quantity, Not, You Know, Morality)

Let’s face it: there’s few things more romantic than trains, and robberies of said trains have formed the backbone of great novels and films for over a century. The modern reality is not quite Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, however. It’s impoverished and not quite moral bandits piling rocks onto tracks in a bid to derail a train, then making off with whatever they can sell. No dynamite and bank vaults here.

In Mexico, the rising popularity of such robberies is proving an expensive headache for automakers shipping cars from Mexican assembly plants.

According to Bloomberg (h/t to Jalopnik), the largely agricultural town of Acultzingo, four hours southeast of Mexico City, is the epicenter of an explosion in train robberies. The past year alone saw 521 crimes committed against freight trains in Acultzingo. It seems that the declining popularity of fuel theft has turned bandits loose on other targets of opportunity, and trains make for a particularly profitable payday.

Once derailed by a rock pile (or cut brake lines), robbers lying in wait raid the train cars for anything of value that can be easily carried away. Booze, footwear, anything — including parts wrenched off factory-fresh automobiles. And these losses pale in comparison to the overall damage incurred from the train wreck. One derailment saw GMexico Transportes take a $15 million hit.

So bad are the losses from train bandits that Mazda, which produces the Mazda 2 and 3 at its Salamanca assembly plant, has taken to driving some of its products to their intended destination. Bloomberg cites analyst estimates of a 30 percent increase in the shipping costs of those vehicles. Still, it’s preferable to taking the cars through Acultzingo by rail, but only to a point.

Semi trucks travelling lonely stretches of highway are also inviting targets.

Mazda isn’t along in taking losses from train bandits. Audi ships 3,300 vehicles per day to the port of Veracruz from its Puebla assembly plant, and a spokesperson claims the thefts have had a “big impact” on its distribution. “Every car we make has a client waiting for it,” the automaker said.

Last month, Mexico’s auto industry association boss, Eduardo Solis, called out the crimes. The train robberies are “simply unacceptable,” he said.

With rail-bound robberies on the rise, it looks like the only solution is a coordinated federal response, which is credited with reducing the prevalence of fuel robberies — to the detriment of the rail industry and its customers.

a version of this article first appeared on thetruthaboutcar.com

The post Great Train Robberies (in Quantity, Not, You Know, Morality) appeared first on VWVortex.



from VWVortex https://ift.tt/2LNa00s
via IFTTT

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Watch: The Stig Drives (nearly) Seven Generations of Golf GTI

With Volkswagen announcing “major” updates to the Golf, it seems an appropriate time to look back on what we’ve had so far. And who better to guide us through the rich history of the most popular European car ever made than Ben Collins, the former Stig? Some say he’s never met a GTI he doesn’t love, and that he can’t grow any of his own facial hair. All we know is … Ben Collins is actually a pretty solid presenter. Working his way through seven generations of the GTI (skipping over the Mk6) Collins tells us a little bit about each one and matches each mark to its corresponding facial hair craze. The Mk1 GTI for instance, is light and quick, but can lose traction under hard acceleration (in heavy rain). Despite that, Collins calls the Mk1 a “pure gem.” The Mk4, meanwhile, is a powerful return to form after the perhaps too sensible Mk3. Collins ends in the only way he could, with the Mk7, which accelerates faster than a Lamborghini Countach and is all kinds of wonderful. Watch, ...

Watch: The Story of the Ads that Made VW Big in America

The ads for the original Beetle are almost as famous and well-loved as the Beetle itself. Looking back now it’s easy to forget, though, just how easily things could have wrong. A new short from Dial M Films tracks the history of those early Volkswagen ads that sold America on the people’s car. The story, of course, begins with the visionary agency that made the ads: Doyle Dane Bernach (DDB). As a popular agency for Jewish products, no agency was more aware of the implications of Volkswagen, and no one, it seems, was more skeptical of the brand than DDB. “Remember Those Great Volkswagen Ads?” from Dial M Films on Vimeo . William Bernbach, though, was adament that the firm take the client, probably as a way of attracting other lucrative automotive clients. Saddled with a client that he didn’t want, art director Helmut Krone says in the film that he originally came up with ads that were all wrong. Krone tried to do what other manufacturers did and was intent on selling the Beetle ...

Watch: The Zerouno Cruis’n USA

ItalDesign is drumming up excitement for its new supercar based around the same 5.2-liter Audi V10 that powers the R8. Naturally, it hit the road for a cruise around California last week to celebrate Monterey Car Week. There isn’t much in the way of V10 noise—which is a real shame given the sound it makes—but you do at least get a good look at the car inside and out in this video. With a body made entirely of carbon fiber and designed to be as aerodynamic and light as possible, ItalDesign figures that it will be good for a 0-60 time of just 3.2 seconds. “We put it our best skills into the production of the first car,” said Massimo Bovi, head of pre-series production, when the Zerouno was first unveiled in Geneva earlier this year. “Using some of the finest productions methods and engaging our high-skilled workers.” The car features clever aero tricks gleaned from single-seat racing, like a y-duct up front to improve downforce and turn-in. Available in a number of trim levels, the...