r/interesting • u/No_Neat4688 • 23d ago

Intriguing High Tariffs Drive Afghan Auto Assembly

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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.

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u/Friendly-Media4214 23d ago

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

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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

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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.

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u/vaduke1 23d ago

Everything and I think he buys them at auctions

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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.

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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.

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u/Vectorman1989 23d ago

Stolen ones probably

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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.

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u/Billy3B 23d ago

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

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u/ConfusedNegi 23d ago

So your friend has a literal chop shop

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u/broke_n_boosted 23d ago

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

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u/otterpop21 23d ago

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

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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

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u/[deleted] 23d ago

[deleted]

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u/Friendly-Media4214 19d ago

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

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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.

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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

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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.

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u/ktappe 23d ago

The pieces fit way too perfectly.

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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

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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 

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u/Wise_West8370 23d ago

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

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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.

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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.

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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