The damage to the vehicles will be covered by insurance, the automaker said.
VW Group has been tight-lipped about the exact breakdown of the U.S.-bound vehicles aboard the Felicity Ace, which departed the German port of Emden on Feb. 10 and was scheduled to arrive in the Port of Davisville in Rhode Island on Feb. 23, according to a posting on Marinetraffic.com. More than 100 of the nearly 4,000 vehicles on board were headed for the Port of Houston in Texas.
However, dealer and company sources tell Automotive News that nearly half of the vehicles were Audis, followed in volume by Porsche vehicles, which were believed to outnumber the VW-brand vehicles on board by more than 2 to 1. Two of the group’s big-ticket brands also had substantial numbers of its vehicles aboard, sources said, including 189 Bentleys and 85 Lamborghinis.
Bugatti, which also is part of VW Group, delivers its bespoke vehicles bound for North America from Europe by air.
While the number of each brand vehicle on board may be known, the extent of damage to individual vehicles may not be available for some time. Andrea Baldi, CEO of Lamborghini of America, told Automotive News last week that he was hopeful that at least some of the Urus SUVs and Huracan and Aventador supercars were in sections of the ship that were spared the worst of the conflagration.
“We’ll be looking forward to hear after somebody really can climb on the ship and maybe get some of the details” on the condition of the vehicles, Baldi said. “The photographs gave me the impression that perhaps one side of the ship wasn’t that damaged, but we don’t know. If any electric cars were on the ship, you can imagine the effect with fires [of lithium ion batteries is] not the best.”
Among the Lamborghinis aboard, Baldi said the vast majority were Urus SUVs, with what was believed to be just a handful of Huracan and Aventador models. The Aventador is being wound down and is sold out.
