#disasters

An outbreak of tornadoes through the Gulf states and into the Southeast early last week saw one twister shatter a sprawling BorgWarner assembly plant. Known for building all-important transfer cases for four-and all-wheel drive vehicles, the Seneca, SC facility lay in near-ruins following the direct hit, though it wasn’t known which manufacturers sourced components from the plant.

Well, it turns out one recipient of Seneca-built parts is Ford — and it uses a lot of them.

This time last year, automakers were busy offering discounts to Houston-area residents in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. With Hurricane Florence now leaving billions of dollars in damage in her wake, we appear to be settling into an new trend of annual incentives stemming from natural disasters. It’s like truck month for a very specific and unfortunate consumer group.

While none of the current deals are on par with replacing a vehicle obliterated by the storm, they are nice little incentives that could help influence your purchasing decisions. CarsDirect compiled a short list of the manufacturers offering discounts if customers can prove their automobile was lost to an Act of God this month.

Bottlenecks are bad things to experience. Around 70,000 years ago, the Toba supervolcano eruption reduced humanity to anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 breeding pairs — thus creating a genetic bottleneck — alongside a global cooling event concurrent with the Last Glacial Period.

For automakers in the United States and their North American supply chain, their Toba event is coming.