This morning J received an email featuring the carcass of a burned out black jaguar whose front bumper and license plates had completely melted off. He showed me the photograph and with jaw dropped, reported that the car belonged to his brother’s girlfriend, who finds her home in Berlin. She’d left the office a few days prior and couldn’t find her car (a company car), so proceeded to call the police, who located it shortly afterwords.

The police concluded that her car was the the target of fire-storming — the unofficial term for cars burned by a team of anti-luxury car leftists who have been setting cars around Berlin on fire in protest of conspicuous wealth. Unofficial word along the grapevine suggests 300-400 cars were hit last year, and dozens have already been burned this year. The majority of burned cars have been Mercedes, though BMWs and Porsches are among the hard hit as well.

This site, Brennende-Autos.de offers an extensive map showing locations of burnt cars. I find this whole phenomenon both appalling and completely fascinating.

Published Tuesday, February 3rd, 2009 at 6:03 pm. Filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.