Insurance claims filed after people drive into wild animals are worryingly common, but the same can’t be said for claims submitted after an animal trashes your car while it’s parked. That’s exactly what happened at a BMW specialist in Sweden this weekend when a moose got itself stuck inside a garage and stomped all over three classic BMWs.
One of Earth’s last remaining mega fauna found its way inside a garage owned by BMW and Mini specialist Schmiedmann in Sweden over the weekend. Company director Viktor Örtegren was at the Schmiedmann facility in the outskirts of Gothenburg putting his speedboat in storage for the winter. After towing the boat inside, he heard a commotion and peaked around the hull to see that a moose had walked right into the facility.
Evidently, the moose was just as shocked as Örtegren was to see it and reportedly jumped over three cars that were being stored in the garage, including a recently restored BMW 850i. The moose then stood up on its back legs and clattered its front hooves down on the freshly-painted hood of the classic BMW, explained a spokesperson from Schmiedmann.
Video of the ordeal has been shared across social media in the days since and it is wild. The moose looks enormous compared with the cars it’s walking all over, which includes the 850, an E36 3-Series and a second classic E31 850i. Two cars belonged to customers of Schmiedmann while the third was an employee’s own vehicle. A statement shared by the company added:
When Viktor contacted the owner of the most damaged BMW 850i and told him, “I am terribly sorry – but a big moose came by and stomped your BMW 850 to pieces” – the customer initially thought it was a prank or a joke. Although it’s sad to see all the damage to the cars, Viktor is just relieved that no one – including the moose – was hurt in the incident. Initially, Viktor had actually feared that the stressed animal would see and attack him, so he hid behind the boat.
The moose, thankfully, didn’t attack and instead made a run for it out of the garage as soon as it could. The animal ran across a nearby highway and left its $20,000 trail of destruction far behind.
Damage from large animals like moose is a serious issue in Scandinavia, so much so that researchers in the region recently pioneered a moose-shaped crash test dummy that earned them an IG Nobel Award.
