Beihai, China – The last thing Chinese fishermen expected to pull out of the ocean was a luxury German automobile.
Jalopnik reports that a group of individuals recently fished the vehicle from the waters near Guangxi Province.
Since a car that’s been sitting at the bottom of the ocean for an extended period of time isn’t worth very much to anyone, the guys sold the waterlogged Porsche Cayenne to a garage for roughly $640.
Authorities said they currently have no idea how the car found its way to the bottom of the ocean. Although police aren’t entirely sure how long the vehicle was in the ocean, the fishermen believe it was probably in the water for at least two years.
Car News China explains that Beihai is frequently use to smuggle various goods into the country. This is reportedly done to avoid China’s high import taxes.
The website explains:
“The goods, mostly cars but also many other luxury goods, come from Hong Kong, Macau, or Vietnam, and are transported by sea to a silent stretch of Chinese coast. It is mostly very small-scale stuff, one tiny smuggling ship with a single car on its deck.”
Since the coast guard is currently on the lookout for smugglers in the region, one theory suggests that someone may have gotten nervous and pushed the Porsche Cayenne into the ocean.
According to The Telegraph , the German car manufacturer has enjoyed quite a bit of success with its line of luxury SUVs in recent months. Sales of the Cayenne in China are second only to the United States. In November, Porsche sold a combined total of 7,000 units in both markets. In China, this represented a 63 percent increase in sales from October.
Although these SUVs tend to sell for around one million yuan in China, the fishermen only managed to get 4,000 yaun for the Porsche Cayenne. Photos of the vehicle can be found at CRI English .
