Sweds must not be big on Toyota cars, because no one is buying any and car dealer lots are overflowing. Where do new models go if there isn’t room on land? Try Sea. One thing is certain, all that salt air and water can’t be good for the struts.

Toyota cars in Sweden are being kepts on a barge, which the company is renting since both lots and docks are full of vehicles no one is buying. There are somewhere around 12,500 cars on their lots, the rest are floating around like the crew of the Titanic (hmm…might be a sh*tty comparison). The situation is so bad that Toyota has effectively run out of land to park cars on…overflowing lots have forced Toyota to rent a ship to store nearly 2,500 unsold cars. Thanks to Japan Car Blog via Jalopnik for the story. Rumor has it Mazda is in talks with Continental to store MX-5′s in the air.

Thanks to the automotive financial crisis going on in this country, many car companies, auto media outlets and parts suppliers are cutting corners…or closing down due to pressure from the accountants. Here’s a semi-complete list of all those suffering from the end of America’s Car Industry. A moment of silence please:

Chrysler LLC

General Motors

Detroit & Northern Ohio Auto Workers

2010 4.5 Liter Duramax Diesel Engine

Hybrid Cars

OPEL

Japanese Auto Makers

Toyota-Subaru Supercar

Saturn

Motive Magazine

Visteon Suppliers

PT Cruiser

Dodge Viper

Checker Taxi

American Axle

Out in North East Ohio many assembly line employees at Chrysler owned facilities are in a panic. Sales are down BIG TIME and the final month of 2008 doesn’t look to be coming in as an upswing. Each month hundreds, sometimes thousands, are laid off or given notice that they will be by year’s end. It’s a hard time all over the place, and to combat this situation some local Ohio dealerships, perhaps in collusion with automotive companies, are using mostly blue collar employees in commercials to guilt you into buying American.

The ad I witnessed this morning was sponsored by a local Chevrolet dealer, and featured employees (or actors portraying employees) for said dealership as well as auto assembly line workers. Each takes a turn reminding us how bad the car industry in the Midwest is doing, and that every foreign car purchased within our borders makes this struggle even more insurmountable. They’re not lying, or even exaggerating – companies are losing money on the vehicles coming off plant lines as well as those still sitting in lots, unsellable in today’s economy.

We are not saying buy foreign, we are not saying buy American. Buy whatever type of vehicle you want, or (mor importantly) can afford.

But there’s something uneasy about using the struggling workers in this industry against us. It does grab attention, obviously, which is the purpose of any advertisement. But it sits uneasy when you think about those people and their lives, and the fact that you can’t help them – because like them you are no where near able to afford a new car. And why send the workers out to grovel, when your bosses are taking million-dollar jets to Congressional meetings to beg for billions. So we ask, is it fair that dealers or their parent companies use (possibly soon to be laid off) workers, who physically produce these vehicles, to tug at our wallets heartstrings and get us shopping on their lots or browsing dealership websites?