Volkswagen’s “Dirty Diesels” Wait For A Fix In Purgatory’s Parking Lot

While Volkswagen tries to figure out a solution to make its cheating diesel engines pollute less, the automaker is still buying back cars from individual owners who chose that option and has to put those cars somewhere. It turns out that “somewhere” is actually several places, including the parking lot of the long-abandoned Pontiac Silverdome, former home of the Detroit Lions and Pistons.

The idle VWs are also doing time at a decommissioned Air Force base in California, and in a lot at the port of Baltimore.

While VW waits for a fix that would save hundreds of thousands of cars from ending up in scrap yards, it has to put those cars somewhere. Volkswagen told Jalopnik’s David Tracy that after dealerships buy dirty diesels back, they’re sent to wait in “regional facilities,” and he located three of them.

The Silverdome site is arguably the saddest, and Tracy was able to find it just by driving to Pontiac and following a trailer of newish Volkswagens to the vehicular purgatory. You can see a photo from that lot at the top of this post: the cars are indeed all newish Volkswagens that aren’t damaged.

Another lot that a tipster said held at least 1,000 cars turned in in California is on a former Air Force base in San Bernardino, CA. Another reader found five storage lots that were full of Volkswagens near the port of Baltimore. Sure, Baltimore is where imported cars often enter the United States, but cars freshly shipped over from Germany wouldn’t be a mix of model years and have bumper stickers and other signs of loving ownership.