TAIPEI (THE CHINA POST/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) - A NT$10 million (S$451,600) Lamborghini Murcielago sports car that had been sitting in a police impound lot for the last three years finally got scrapped at a breaker's yard in Taichung, central Taiwan, on Wednesday (Dec 14).
The car's owner, a commercial pilot surnamed Lin, had driven the vehicle on a public road without a valid registration plate in 2013.
He was stopped at a routine checkpoint, where police officers found that he had affixed the licence plates of a modest Ford sedan onto the Murcielago in an attempt to evade law enforcement.
The vehicle was immediately impounded by the police under the Road Traffic Management and Penalty Act.
Mr Lin started an administrative appeal in 2014 but the ruling went against him. He filed appeal after appeal in the following two years to no avail.
On Wednesday, Mr Lin sent a friend to try and prevent his car from being demolished, but after 30 minutes of discussion, the authorities gave the procedure the go-ahead.
The vehicle is shown being torn apart in a matter of minutes in a YouTube video posted on Wednesday (Dec 14) by YouTube user Lux Lum that has more than 177,000 views.
The scrapping of the expensive car caught the attention of international news outlets, including Britain's Daily Mail and American car news website Autoblog.
Videos of the destruction drew outrage from viewers across the globe, who said scrapping it was a waste and the car could have been used in other ways.
Said Facebook user Joshua Munchow on Autoblog's Facebook post: "Regardless of whether you like Lamborghinis or not, economically, destroying illegally imported vehicles is a waste for the government."
He added that profit from selling it could be used "to fund public programmes, infrastructure projects, even pay half a dozen workers salaries for a year".
YouTube user Shobhit Gosain said there should at least be "some respect for the people who invested their hours making this car. (The) government can use it as a showpiece, auction it or run as a government taxi even".
