“That all depends if the car’s owner actually kept up with the registration.”

I wonder how much detective work the airport parking folks are willing to do.

That or people traveling in and out of Pittsburgh often enough for work to justify keeping an extra car there. After covid shut everything down the costs of recovering some of these cars might have been more than they’re worth.

A new co-worker went to another country for a conference, and had to go back to his home country for visa renewal. He technically wasn’t even a coworker yet, so his stuff was being relocated including his car. He knew he’d be delayed with the visa, so he asked me to take care of his car for him. So, I picked it up…

An ex vp of my company who is based in a different country still has his very new Mercedes just rotting away in our company parking garage and its been there for like two years and no one is quite sure of what to do with it.  I feel like a lot of these cars are in similar situations.

When I was in grad school I knew students that came to the US to study, bought a car, then later left the US and left their car behind, sometimes in a parking lot on campus.

Travelers, students, or other H1-B employees were my first thought. A lot of people flew home when covid hit and then couldn’t get visas renewed all summer. I started teaching at CMU in the fall and desks had just been left with work and equipment on them, expecting it to blow over quickly and then things like that…

Have you ever had to walk from the terminal to the far edge of extended parking in Pittsburgh? Some of those people just haven’t made it back to their car yet.

this.

The Jalopnik short story contest. Pick a car-write a 500 word story about why. 

Yeah I feel like this is pretty straightforward, over the past however many years ten people died after taking a flight from Pittsburgh.

I know in some municipalities if a car is towed to a junkyard and/or left at a parking meter long enough without being claimed it is declared abandoned and sold off. Odds are all of these were reported stolen and the owner’s compensated via insurance (although I cannot explain how they would have gotten the keys for…

Lots of spies dropping their old identity (and vehicle) at the airport and moving on to their new lives somewhere else.
Ok I have probably been reading too many spy novels.

I’m looking for long form journalism, not a tweet.  

anyone have a link to the auction?

Deaths, illness or jail.

My ex had a Mini Countryman S of that vintage. A car so shitty in every aspect, I would have also forgotten it at an airport parking lot.

Would be a helluva’ article to read the backstories of how these cars ended up abandoned. Hint, hint.

You felt that the “traumatic family holiday” zinger wasn’t enough as a pithy photo caption, so you repeated the exact same phrase in the body of the article? Boy, this place has really gone to the dogs.