The shiny puddles look like some low-temp metal melted and oozed out of the car as it burned. I wonder what part(s) melted, and what type of metal it is?
The picture is from a NPR piece about the current Los Angeles wildfires: https://www.npr.org/sections/the-picture-show/2025/01/09/g-s1-41784/los-angeles-fire-photos
That is almost certainly aluminum, not enough lead in a modern car and the color is wrong.
Aluminum melts at a bit over 1200 degrees freedom, wildfires can exceed 2000 freedom units.
Engines, wheels, and suspension components are commonly made from aluminum. Looking at the scene presented, it is probably mostly the wheels that melted and ran downhill.
1200 F ~ 649 C
2000 F ~ 1093 C
Thank you
Damn, you replied before I did. I was gonna say that it looks like someone is using leaded fuel
Edit: Also, the F does stand for freedom, so “degrees freedom” is correct. But I thought “freedom units” are like when you say how many infant-fevers hot a fire is.
Today was a cold, stiff day with only 3 degrees of freedom
So almost fully constrained!
Units of freedom is a measurement of freedom related to the number of children killed in school shootings.
Freedom units are units of measurement in countries that have been to the moon, analogous to saying metric in referring to a base 10 measurement system that was used to get to the moon.
Magnesium alloy subframe, suspension, and wheels are also fairly common in modern cars.
FWIW the magnesium would burn rather than melt probably
Something about this really makes me want to see if you can separate out the component metals of a car via extremely high temp fractional distilation.