A R1,34-million diamond that was embedded in Christian Klien’s Jaguar disappeared in Monaco on Sunday, but the loss is insignificant compared with the 4 191 cars that were lost when a carrier sunk near Singapore.
A R1,34-million diamond that was embedded in Christian Klien’s Jaguar disappeared in Monaco on Sunday, but the loss is insignificant compared with the 4 191 cars that were lost when a carrier sunk near Singapore on the very same day.
CARtoday.com reported on Friday that each of the Milton Keynes-based team’s R5s had been fitted with a gem on the nosecone following a sponsorship deal with a diamond company. The Jaguars were also advertising the forthcoming Hollywood movie , which involves a diamond heist.
Jaguar Racing spokesman Nav Sidhu announced after Sunday’s Monaco Grand Prix that one of the gems had gone missing when Klien crashed his car nose first into the guardrail at the Mirabeau corner on the first lap of the race.
Sidhu said the gem had gone by the time the wrecked car was returned to the garages much later: "Somebody here is going to walk away with more than just a normal motor racing keepsake. "I don’t expect we are going to get it back at all”.
But on the other side of the globe, a ship carrying almost 4 200 cars, consisting of Hyundai and Kia vehicles, sank after colliding with an oil tanker in a busy shipping lane south of Singapore.
Twenty crewmembers were rescued, there were no reports of oil leaks and the cause of the accident was not clear. The weather was fine and the ships communicated with each other before colliding, officials said.
The Maritime and Ports Authority of Singapore said car carrier MV Hyundai No105 and tanker MT Kaminesan, carrying 279 949 tons of crude oil, collided just before midnight.
Rescue tugs towed the Panama-registered tanker into Singapore for repairs, said authority spokeswoman Theresa Pong.
Tugs also towed the car carrier out of the busy shipping lane, which is used by vessels sailing between west and east Asia, before it sank just before dawn yesterday in 40m-deep Indonesian waters about seven kilometres from Singapore’s main island. The 17-year-old ship had a hole measuring 50m by 20m in its side.
The vessel left the South Korean port of Ulsan on May 16, and was headed for Germany. The site of the sinking was marked to alert other vessels, a spokeswoman for the ship’s operator, Eukor Car Carriers, said. She declined to reveal the value of the cargo.
"Salvage work is not on the cards at the moment because we want to ensure that there has been no environmental damage caused by the collision with the crude carrier," Phay said.
The vehicles were insured, so the company would not suffer a loss because of the accident, said Hyundai official Kim Hwo-young.