Strange times are on the car industry, perhaps none stranger than what's facing Toyota right now with its European inventory backlog. Short of storage space for cars that are unsold in the EU, Toyota has taken to floating the cars just off the shore of Sweden in a rented container ship.

The seriousness of the situation is outweighed only by its absurdity. Over 12,000 cars are already stored in the port at Malmo. With unsold capacity at least 2,500 cars above that mark, Toyota had to do something, says BusinessWeek.

"It's an emergency measure that we had to take due to storage space issues," said Toyota spokesperson Anne Gaublomme."We hope to keep the time of this measure as short as possible, as we are continuously adapting our production level."

How long it might take to even out the nearly 15,000-car oversupply wasn't revealed, however. In the mean time, the cars will continue to float around the harbor. Now that the overflow is so great that ship rental has become necessary, Toyota can be expected to refrain from sending even more vehicles to the area.

The backlog is the result of a drop in exports of 60% in January, and the previously strong yen's effect on prices hasn't helped.