Unsold Suzuki automobiles sit parked in the Dundalk Marine Terminal at the port of Baltimore February 18, 2009 in Baltimore, Maryland. As the worldwide economic downturn persists and automobile sales continue to slow, more than 57,000 new automobiles sit idle in the port of Maryland. The state of Maryland recently paid $5.26 million for almost 15 acres of additional car storage space near the port, freeing space for more cargo. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images North America)

By Brady Dennis, Washington Post Staff Writer The sea of new cars, 57,000 of them, stretches for acres along the Port of Baltimore. They are imports just in from foreign shores and exports waiting to ship out — Chryslers and Subarus, Fords and Hyundais, Mercedeses and Kias. But the customers who once bought them by the millions have largely vanished, and so the cars continue to pile up, so many that some are now stored at nearby Baltimore-Washington International Marshall Airport. The backlog exists because many of the factors that contributed to the collapse of the housing bubble — cheap credit, easy financing, excessive production, consumers buying more than they could afford — undermined another large and vital American industry. "There was a car bubble," Steven Rattner, who President Obama recruited to head a Treasury Department group charged with finding solutions to the mountain of problems facing the American auto industry, said in an interview last month. "We had this artificially high sales rate." …

Too Many Cars, and They’re Not on the Road

Technorati Tags: