Unsold Cars Piling Up

CARS - The automotive industry is doing so bad right now they're running out of room to store unsold cars.

In Sweden, Toyota recently rented a cargo ship to store 2500 unsold Toyota cars in the Swedish port of Malmo. 30,000 more unsold cars from various companies are currently clogging up the Malmo dock.

In Israel, car sales in Tel Aviv are doing so badly that they've had to open a new 21-acre lot to store them at Pi Glilot.

In Germany, car lots are so overstocked they've started offering a car scrapping scheme, giving customers a discount of €2,500 Euros to scrap their old cars (any car made before 2000) for materials to help them buy new cars.

In Canada, Chrysler has rented the Downsview Canadian Forces Base in Toronto, and has filled it with unsold Dodge Challengers.

In England, Nissan has taken to parking its excess capacity on its UK test track.

In North America alone, capacity exceeds demand by about 7 million vehicles. Car sales in the United States are down 35.5% compared to last year, and countries in Europe and Asia are similarly hurting.

An estimated 35 million unsold vehicles are currently sitting in lots around the world waiting to be sold.

There is certainly an argument that this economic decline should now be considered a depression, not a recession. The economy first went sour in August 2007, and any recession longer than a year is considered to be a depression.