The social media has been taken by storm by the heartbreaking photos of the Mercedes SLS AMG coming out of a container full of mud and water. But what happened to it? How did this fabulous car end up like this?

The incident took place in June 2013, as three containers of a cargo ship fell into the waters of the Port of Ensenada in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The others two contained electronics, but the third was supposed to keep the Affalterbach creation in white safe to meet its owner. Which never happened though…

The rescue operation took no less than five days, spent by the Mercedes floating on water. When they finally managed to recover it and put it back on the ground, the sight was devastating: water, salt, seashells and mud had sneaked into every little corner of the Mercedes. The customer who had ordered the exotic engined beauty had to give it up, after the insurance company decided that the automobile was unrecoverable.

At that time, in Argentina, there were only 18 such models and the price of the last selling models was of $710,000.

After five days of drying in the sun, believe it or not, the Mercedes-Benz technicians managed to start the 6.2-liter V8 engine. Apparently, its 571 horsepower had not drowned.  But the lights on the dashboard showed there was no chance for the car to ever return to its initial spectacular shape.

The car was shipped back to Germany and fully disassembled, but in some of the comments on social networks, users claim it is still running, with the original engine and transmission.