Edinburgh robotic car park in Morrison Street and mystery of vintage cars remembered 5 years on

Remembering the day vintage cars were hoisted out of ‘robot car park’
Watch more of our videos on Shots! 
and live on Freeview channel 276
Visit Shots! now

The Edinburgh Evening News archives are full of some real gems, including a story from five years ago today which sparked the imaginations of our readers.

Eight cars - including an Austin Maestro and Fiat Uno models from the 1990s – which were found trapped inside an empty robotic car park in Morrison Street were removed with a crane, causing many in the city to put forward their weird and wonderful theories about who may have owned the vehicles.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The mystery of the removal operation came years after the car park was opened by SkyParks Edinburgh in 2001 and was branded the ‘most technologically advanced car park in Britain’. The BBC at the time reported that drivers would leave their cars, which would then be scanned by robots and moved into spaces using lifts and turntables.

Credit: David HickeyCredit: David Hickey
Credit: David Hickey

But the company collapsed and the car park quickly fell out of use. The building sat derelict for well over a decade before new development work began on the site.

And it was the start of that work which led to an interesting discovery. In 2018, the Evening News was sent pictures of the cars being removed from the ‘robot car park’ via crane, and readers put forward their theories of who these cars might possibly belong to and how they came to be abandoned at the site.

Speaking at the time, demolition firm GCM Services said “every effort would be made to save the vehicles” during the course of the project.

Comment Guidelines

National World encourages reader discussion on our stories. User feedback, insights and back-and-forth exchanges add a rich layer of context to reporting. Please review our Community Guidelines before commenting.