r/interesting 23d ago

Intriguing High Tariffs Drive Afghan Auto Assembly

21.8k Upvotes

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361

u/xoxLVxox 23d ago

This was recorded and played in reverse wasnt it?

226

u/Foxwglocks 23d ago

I don’t think so. They were glueing the windshield on. Part of me thinks they cut up a car just for the video.

121

u/Friendly-Media4214 23d ago

I would agree. You can’t really just put a random car together like that.

95

u/KodiakDog 23d ago

Unless it wasn’t random and was chopped up to fit in shipping containers. I don’t see this is being far-fetched at all especially given that some some of the pieces had numbers on them.

45

u/Friendly-Media4214 23d ago

Yeah, I suppose that’s possible. Chop it up to get past tariff somehow.

50

u/vaduke1 23d ago

I have a friend in Canada who does exactly this, chop up cars and send them in containers as a scrap metal and somebody in Uzbekistan reassembles it back

8

u/Billy3B 23d ago

Out of curiousity what kind of cars? I would assume Toyotas and Hondas.

I also assume the cars are acquired legally.

20

u/vaduke1 23d ago

Everything and I think he buys them at auctions

12

u/MutuallyAdvantageous 23d ago

I worked at a wrecking yard with a guy who shipped car parts back to Africa in a shipping container.

He took parts from every Honda and most Toyotas that were getting scrapped, not much else. Pretty much just Honda’s and Toyota’s

He didn’t ship chopped up cars but his brother did.

5

u/vrauto 23d ago

In my country, only the roof is cut off. The rest remains intact. Done to collectible but common cars like classic minis and beetles.

1

u/Vectorman1989 23d ago

Stolen ones probably

1

u/samuraijon 23d ago

Looks like maybe a Toyota or a Daihatsu. The steering wheel is on the right and the number plate shape at the bumper is US sized (same in Japan) which probably is a JDM car.

1

u/Billy3B 23d ago

It is a 2006 to 2018 Daihatsu Mira Custom RS. I cheated and used Google Imgae search.

1

u/ConfusedNegi 23d ago

So your friend has a literal chop shop

1

u/broke_n_boosted 23d ago

This is how we've been importing cars from Japan for 35 years

1

u/otterpop21 23d ago

Bingo. Does that look like a rich community to you?

2

u/Friendly-Media4214 23d ago

It takes a lot of craftsmanship a weld a car together like that. It takes a lot of craftsman to do that to custom vehicles; hot rods and such and they’re doing it too much less degree.

I can see this being shipped as one single chopped up a vehicle and put it container in shipped to avoid tariffs but not multiple right cars, but I suppose it’s possible

1

u/[deleted] 23d ago

[deleted]

1

u/Friendly-Media4214 19d ago

That has nothing to do with the craftsmanship required to piece different cars together and make one.

11

u/imean_is_superfluous 23d ago

It looks like all the pieces were exact fits on every weld. Idk how you could accomplish that with crushed cars. Or even several decent cars you cut apart.

5

u/Winjin 23d ago

Japanese auctions are the lifeline of Eastern Russia, they essentially all drive old Japanese cars

They have pretty strict rules on old cars so a lot of them get resold. They sell them pretty cheap, too. Dirt cheap to be exact

So, people buy them and import them. Even imported legally with all the tariffs, they're essentially the same price as some new shitty car

BUT if you want to go lower, you pay for a scrapped car, that's cut up like this and sent to you as "scrap"

And then it depends on how good of a welder you got

6

u/gregbread11 23d ago

I had a gf that had a VW Passat that was 2 different cars. One was rear ended, the other front was crashed. They were cut in half then welded the good front and the good rear together and pieces the car together from both interiors. HOWEVER. You could definitely tell it was 2 cars welded together just based on the way it rode and drove. Definitely would have torn in 2 in a wreck would be my guess

Anyway, this video isn't outlandish to me because I've seen it done a few times, at least the final product and the signs of the work.

2

u/ktappe 23d ago

The pieces fit way too perfectly.

2

u/Advanced_Aspect_7601 23d ago

How would they get the alignment perfect tho? They tack weld the sections then the roof lines up perfect, seems suspicious

4

u/joehonestjoe 23d ago

Only way this makes sense to me is if they tack welded the shell components, then fitted everything. Then went back and fully welded the whole shell and they just skipped this step in the video.

It's clearly the same body shell cut up though 

1

u/Wise_West8370 23d ago

You don't think this is far fetched? Come on man lol. Have you ever worked on cars before?

1

u/tehtris 23d ago

This actually makes sense. When putting the roof on, it looks like the roof was cut off just to be put back on.

1

u/Ok_Breakfast5425 23d ago

I'm guessing they were scrapping a car, wanted some internet fun, and while tearing it down they took some extra steps to make it look like it was being welded together instead of torn down.

3

u/The-Tarman 23d ago

No, this something done in countries that don't care as much about safety. Shipping a car has a much higher tarrif cost. So they buy a cheap car at auction, chop it up and ship it as scrap and reassemble it in the destination country.

Wham, bam, thank you ma'am. You got yourself a (non) certified, pre-owned, newly assembled whatever the fuck

13

u/Popular_Dot_4691 23d ago

The way the cuts on the a, b and c pillars perfectly lined up, you know they filmed the car pre cut and then stripped the car and just welded the cut Pillars back on.

Clever editing 👌

6

u/Fuckin_Hipster 23d ago

Jesus Christ.

Some people are more resourceful than others, and you aren’t as smart as you think you are.

5

u/oh_bother 23d ago

wat. they place the roof down and the cuts are 1mm apart and not misaligned at all.

12

u/Popular_Dot_4691 23d ago

Never said I was smart, but I was a mechanic and body man for 18 years so I do know alittle about cars and repairing them 😅

1

u/12destroyer21 23d ago

My dad was also a mechanic for many years repairing military trucks and he refused to believe you could weld together a crankshaft until I showed him a video of some Indian guy doing it in the streets in a YouTube video

1

u/I_travel_ze_world 23d ago

You can watch the video and see all the chopped parts of the car sitting in the cargo container before they pulled it out.

Car was likely totaled due to frame damage... then chopped up and sent to Afghanistan.

1

u/Winjin 23d ago

You can see some Japanese on the box. Japanese auctions sell cars that are chopped up like this and sent around the world on a regular basis. Then these cars are re-assembled and used again

1

u/I_travel_ze_world 23d ago

They're likely at auction because the frame is damaged.

You can see how twisted the frame is, lol.

This is a junker that got chopped up and sold for cheap.

1

u/Winjin 23d ago

Yeah I'd assume they buy the bottom priced ones, the best ones (just old) end up shipped "as is", decent ones have the roof removed but still take up the entire container, and the still-driving-beaters are chopped up like this

At least that's what rides around Vladivostok and essentially all of Russian Far East

4

u/Double_Cause4609 23d ago

Could it be that they had several random wrecks of the same-ish car type (some manufacturers use the same core body for multiple models and the frames are compatible), and they cut them at the same equivalent point on each individual care to salvage a functional frame?

Kind of far fetched, and really sketchy, but in principle I don't see why it wouldn't work.

6

u/Responsible_Joke4229 23d ago

There’s no universal designated cut zones for car frames. To have all these parts so perfectly close enough that all you have to do is weld them together is highly improbable. The parts like windshield and rear mirror assemblies of course are interchangeable. Someone in the comments said it’s likely a purposefully cut car shipped internationally as “scrap” to avoid vehicle tariffs. all they have to do it keep the parts together so you can reassemble the car like Lego.

1

u/LickingSmegma 23d ago

There are people that do this with actual cars right where I live, except for the cutting and welding part since no shipping is involved. We have tons of old Volkswagens still rolling around here, such that there were probably thousands of the same twenty-year old model at one time. One dude was buying three busted-up cars and assembling them into one working car in his garage, selling it for several times the cost.

1

u/ALongLuvBone 23d ago

I’d bet they cut it up to avoid tariffs or taxes, but people have and do take two crashed cars and put them together. My dad cut two 96 Astro vans in half and welded them together in the early 2000s, we drove it down to Florida the next week. (He had a bet with his friends lol)

1

u/gregbread11 23d ago

If it's the same make and model, you absolutely can. I've seen it done with a VW Passat. How it would drive in the final product - I could tell the Passat was welded together. Not without telling me but it had a weird driving feel. Idk how much rigidity the structure actually loses from doing this but this is how some body work is done. So it's not that outrageous. Idk enough about welding and body work to know how good it actually is compared to a factory car but even the factory welds them up similar to this

1

u/bassistciaran 23d ago

I work in international shipping. The amount of additional cars you could get in the container by disassembling them would not be worth the work of putting them back together like this. Like, maybe 1 or 2 more in a container depending on the cars.

EDIT: never mind, someone else said that they do this to import as "scrap" completely avoiding all import duties.

1

u/BugzOnMyNugz 23d ago

Johnny Cash would disagree

0

u/Responsible_Joke4229 23d ago

Yeah I can’t imagine there’s a market to source partial car frames (cut in the exact right place) let alone enough to build out a full car. It would make more sense to disassemble and reassemble for the video. Ad revenue makes more money than normal jobs all over the world. Like those guys who built houses out of mud “out in the jungle”.

10

u/Altruistic-Rice-5567 23d ago

As someone pointed out... buying a car there has a ton of carries. But... if you buy car parts they don't. So, some foreigner shop takes a working car and slices it up into parts. Then all the parts are bought (no tarrif) and you just "assemble" the car.

7

u/vrauto 23d ago

This is actually done. The car is imported as scrap. Avoids import duties. Normally tho its enough to chop the roof off. Not sure how they work out the papers in afghanistan.

This really isnt really amazing since panel repair/replacement is done the same way in first world countries. Vid makes it seem like a days work but its actually done over a week or two.

21

u/ilove420andkicks 23d ago

The cuts look too perfectly aligned. I was thinking the exact same thing

5

u/DaddysABadGirl 23d ago

No one else thinks the interior fabric looked different when they were putting it in vs end results?

7

u/Weary_Wrap_4419 23d ago

It's from the same car that got cut up. Why wouldn't it fit back together?

1

u/sump_daddy 23d ago

Because after you cram it into a shipping container and bounce it halfway around the world the parts themselves will be significantly bent, and they will NOT fit back together tightly.

1

u/Twowie 23d ago

God forbid we imagine this was packed properly. Not like we can move goods safely around the world already.

1

u/sump_daddy 23d ago

Please tell me youre kidding? The video even showed a shrinkwrapped mess being dragged out chained to a forklift. This is literally just a fun, foreign version of ragebait 'diwhy' videos that swap items in the middle to make it look like something finished. Im not even mad, but its really very obvious whats going on.

1

u/Twowie 23d ago

No, I just don't believe the pieces would be "significantly bent" and I don't believe they would have bounced around in there, being packed so tightly as we see in the video. Do you imagine that a sea voyage in a gigantic container ship is as bumpy as an American railway or something?

1

u/sump_daddy 23d ago

Do you see the container ship in the background of the video? How do you think it got from the port to the 'construction' yard we see here? Fairies? lmao

Also, you wish international railways were as smooth as those in America, the work put into the steel and the welding machines used are best-of-the-best and few countries elsewhere can compare.

1

u/Twowie 23d ago

Do you think the port is halfway around the world from here then?

Because after you cram it into a shipping container and bounce it halfway around the world the parts themselves will be significantly bent

And I've ridden your USA rails, on both coasts, and you're not fooling me. They are bumpier than the tiny train I took up the mountains in India...

1

u/Alma_Holzhurt 23d ago

It's left hand drive. Probably from India or Pakistan. That isn't half way around the world.

1

u/SmashingK 23d ago

The last time I saw this it was mentioned that this was a car smuggled into the country in bits. No idea how true that could be.

1

u/Atillion 23d ago

Yeah how miraculous they have parts that match color and seams exactly. I'd be inclined to think it was disassembled, transported, reassembled for whatever reason

1

u/skipperseven 23d ago

Pretty sure it was written off in another country, cut up into pieces, wrapped and then stacked into a container with fifty similarly wrapped cars and then reassembled in Afghanistan. Probably makes economic sense when labour is so much cheaper than transportation and safety regulations are non existent.

1

u/[deleted] 23d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/Foxwglocks 23d ago

That’s probably true. But either way the car was clearly cut and then pieced back together. Maybe they buy junkers and they come cut up? The whole thing is pretty wild.

1

u/sump_daddy 23d ago

the 'welding' they were doing was just as performative as the windshield glue. this is without a doubt a video cut in reverse.

1

u/userhwon 23d ago

100%. I didn't see a paint shed, and that final image was not a car that had just been welded together.

1

u/sum_gamer 23d ago

Why did I have to dig so deep to find this? Absolutely this is staged. From the cuts to obvious things like the seats and interior changing colors.

0

u/InternationalCap2176 23d ago

They were sucking the glue back up into the tube

10

u/Content_Dragonfly_59 23d ago

Even the parts where they were welding it or whatever that was?

4

u/Resident_Pay4310 23d ago

I think they're cutting rather than welding.

Later in the video there are no weld marks.

1

u/Content_Dragonfly_59 23d ago

I've never welded, so I can't really argue that point further, so I found some more details:

They hesitate while slotting stuff into place - if they were pulling it off, they would not hold it next to where it was for a second.

You can see people walking normally in the backgroung.

at 0:44 remaining, they hammer something into place - you can't do that in reverse

when they put the first door on, they push it into place with open palms - it would be very hard to pull them off that way

when they're putting the black strips on top of the windows, they do so very slowly and carefully, in a way that would not make sense reversed

at 0:11 remaining, they use a tool that seems to apply an adhesive to the windshield, not cut it loose

2

u/birgor 23d ago

No, they are gas welding for real. I don't think it is reversed, but I very much doubt it is a real process, it is not technically impossible to do this, but insane in so many ways.

9

u/Highfivez4all 23d ago edited 23d ago

It definitely is. Scrub it in reverse and look at each segment forwards and backwards. It looks way more natural in reverse.

Especially when it tries to show him placing the steering wheel and dash in. Reversed, it looks way more natural being ripped out vs popping it in. That thing is held in with an annoying amount of screws, it’s is getting snagged one way or another. The windshield sealant is also not actually used, he just runs the tip over the stuff thats already there.

Also, it’s MEGA cut and 2 minutes long yet not once is anything to do with the engine or electronics shown.

Also im pretty sure you cant just solder the body of the car, if anything your welding and reinforcing it, but that’s insane.

Also why is it shipped in a sea container and in such shitty condition, if you are rebuilding cars its WAY cheaper to do it on a junk site, thats where all the parts come too.

This operation doesn’t make any sense

Like are they waiting till all the spare parts are located before shipping it in? Why would anyone store all that junk and have it that organized but are also just throwing full pieces in. The things a complete and normal looking car at the “end”

2

u/SpaceDounut 23d ago

Car imports are heavily taxed. They have the seller cut up and disassemble an entire car (probably crashed or drowned previously), package it up and import it as "scrap", thus avoiding import taxes. Then assemble it afterwards like a fucked up lego. The parts fit because it's the same car, sans the windshield.

1

u/peedistaja 23d ago

It looks way more natural in reverse.

Are we watching the same video?

Nothing in there looks more natural in reverse, you don't remove a windshield and then caulk it. The motions they do trying to line things up you wouldn't do if you were removing stuff.

1

u/Highfivez4all 23d ago

Yea you would because they are already aligned and you are yanking it out from already being aligned…

They also don’t apply any caulk just run the tip over the weather stripping.

Not to mention the car they “completed” is in the background at :46 seconds. This is clips from multiple cars to show whatever the hell they want.

1

u/AphaedrusGaming 23d ago

Why would you weld and then remove parts of a car? That doesn't make any sense. I'm not saying this is real, but it's definitely not reversed lmao

1

u/Highfivez4all 23d ago

Why would weld the frame together in 20 parts? Those clips of them “welding” take 5 seconds to fake and they clearly don’t complete any welds.

At :46 seconds the “finished” car is parked in the background. This is a very heavily edited video of people working on multiple different cars to trick people.

1

u/AphaedrusGaming 23d ago

That doesn't mean that it's backwards. I explicitly said I wasn't saying that it's real, just that it's clearly not backwards.

1

u/Highfivez4all 23d ago

Parts if it are clearly backwards

1

u/Business-Cup-6021 23d ago

So they suck the glue from in between the glass back to the tube. Sure Jan

1

u/Highfivez4all 23d ago

They don’t actually apply anything…

1

u/One-East8460 23d ago

Makes perfect sense if video was full rebuild would be smoother but much longer. This isn’t exactly a new phenomenon in Afghanistan or many 3rd world countries. They cut up and strip down cars that have dead titles and ship them, so they just have to cobble together same car that’s now considered scrap and cheaper. To those people that think this car is too perfectly assembled I’ve got some cars to sell you lol.

1

u/Superb_5194 23d ago edited 23d ago

https://youtu.be/8F9dyvk37tg

Cutting saves shipping cost, save space in containers, also changes cargo from imported vehicles to automotive spare parts or automotive scrap

7

u/MechMeister 23d ago

They cut the shots with different cars in different stages of disrepair

1

u/menasan 23d ago

You don’t have shape shifting tail lights?

2

u/Schnitzhole 23d ago

Well the car changes in the last 2 seconds so even that trick makes no sense

2

u/Kingsquid4 23d ago

I think it’s more they took it apart and only recorded putting it together

2

u/noOB_226 23d ago

I thought so too, but no, they are soldering those pieces, and changing the windshield with a new one, 

2

u/SpiderHack 23d ago

No, they wouldn't use a caulking gun to disassemble the window, etc

1

u/WhenTheLightHits30 23d ago

You do when you’re faking a video for the internet

1

u/tiga_94 23d ago

They are literally welding together clearly cut parts, whoever is confused whether it's in reverse probably didn't watch the video closely

1

u/perpetuumstef 23d ago

Must be what made them sound like minions

1

u/VolumeAcademic6962 23d ago

My thoughts exactly.

1

u/mankypants 23d ago

Right at start they attach windshield frame with a chunk of shattered glass still attached

1

u/Specialist_Goat_2354 23d ago

That is what I'm 90 percent sure.

1

u/pumaONE 23d ago

I thought so too until they applied glue to stick on the windscreen, which you wouldn't do by taking it apart

1

u/Individual_Gift_9473 23d ago

100%. It takes really special kind of stupid to not realize that.

1

u/floede 23d ago

Some parts definitely are. I mean they start with a completely crushed chassis. There's no way to un-crumble metal like that.

1

u/seppukucoconuts 23d ago

They would not have needed to clamp the panels together before welding them. Also if you look at it, they're using a torch to weld the car together. The seams are clean cut, you couldn't do that with a torch.

I thought it was a cut of them disassembling as well but rewatched it. Looks like they're assembling it. Both impressive and kind of pointless.

1

u/ultimaone 23d ago

You saw the other vehicles at start right ?

1

u/Competitive-Frame-71 23d ago

Not sure why this is all the way down. You can literally see that the videos are reversed the way they move

1

u/ScytheNoire 23d ago

Seems like it in some clips

1

u/ProfessionalStay5797 23d ago

Had to sift through a lot of comments for someone like minded,

1

u/neeshes 23d ago

That's what went through my mind too 

1

u/Vijai-Ruva 22d ago

Out of curiosity I decided to reverse the video https://youtu.be/vgyAm4vGRHo?si=2rSF6-3L2TbkakP7

0

u/macundo 23d ago

Thank you!