NIC can sell cars
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NORTHERN Ireland Carriers has been given legal authority to sell 12 De Lorean sports cars which it impounded as security for a £65,000 debt the car manufacturer has not paid.
NIC, which is part of the National Freight Consortium's Special Traffics Group, had a contract to deliver De Lorean cars from the company's Dunmurray factory to Belfast docks for export, and to collect body shells from a factory at Carlow, in the Irish Republic.
It bought a small fleet of Hoynor Mark Two transporter trailers, each capable of holding six cars, for the docks contract, and adapted curtain-sided trailers to carry the body shells.
The cars were impounded last January, before the De Lorean Motor Company went into receivership, and no effort has been made since then for DMC
to repay the debt. The receiver has also refused to pay the debt.
DMC applied to a Belfast judge for the cars to be returned to it, and for NIC to pay for any loss or damage incurred as a result of the cars being impounded. But Lord Justice Gibson ruled earlier this month that, although NIC acted prematurely, it had a right in law to keep and sell the cars, and he has awarded costs in favour of NIC. DMC was given three weeks to appeal (this ends on July 2), and none of the cars can be sold until then.
An NIC spokesman told CM that the cars are worth around £150,000, and that the company would feel obliged to sell them to the highest bidder. It would retain the amount needed to pay off the outstanding debt, and would pass on the balance to De Lorean. The spokesman added that the company anticipates that the cars will find ready buyers in Europe.