THICK fog is hampering efforts to salvage £30m worth of luxury cars from the bottom of the English Channel, after a cargo ship bound for Southampton sank.

The Tricolor, a Norwegian-registered car carrier, had 2,862 BMWs, Volvos and Saabs on board.

Today the stricken vessel was at the centre of a new drama after it was reported that a cargo ship had collided with the Tricolor.

Some of the Tricolor's cargo was due to be unloaded in Southampton at the weekend.

The Tricolor collided with a container ship in bad weather 30 miles east of Ramsgate, Kent at 1.30am on Saturday morning.

The 24-man crew scrambled into lifeboats as the 50,000-ton, 200-metre ship went down within 90 minutes of the collision.

The men were taken to Dunkirk but were not injured.

The ship had picked up its cargo in Zeebrugge, Belgium and was on its way to Southampton before continuing to the US, said Per Ronnevig, spokesman for shipping firm Wilhelmsen Lines, which owned the carrier. Also aboard were 77 other cargo units, which consisted mainly of tractors and crane parts. The ship itself was estimated to be worth £25.1 million. The cargo was valued at between £25m and £31m.

Counter pollution teams were despatched to the scene with equipment designed to minimise environmental damage from the 2,000 tons of fuel oil on board.

But the severe fog made it extremely difficult to undertake any salvage or anti-pollution work.

A Southampton-based Maritime and Coastguard Agency spokesman said: "Fog hasn't let up and it's still very thick there. That's making it incredibly difficult, particularly in the failing light, to pick-up anything from the surface."

He said without knowing what was possible to recover from the sea surface it was impossible to tell what could be done.

The owners have appointed the highly-regarded Dutch company Smit Tak as salvors for the operation and a Belgian warship, the Wandelaar, was acting as on-scene co-ordinator for the French Coastguard.

The container ship Kariba, a 175-metre, 20,829-ton cargo vessel was able to make it to Antwerp despite being severely damaged.