This is the moment a new looking car vanishes into a hole where it drops into a raging torrent below and is seemingly swept away underground.

The massive sinkhole had appeared on road in front of RT-Mart Supermarket in Huanggu District in the sub-provincial city of Shenyang of Liaoning province in China.

Video footage shot from different angles shows two men who are believed to have been in the private car watching the vehicle which appears to be wedged in a hole that has just appeared on the road.

But as they stand there looking, the car suddenly tips up and drops into the seemingly bottomless pit below.

One of the men in a white T-shirt then moves forward, in a bid to look down into the drop below, while the person behind him grabbed his T-shirt to pull him back from being foolish.

The move seems wise because a third video shows that the hole has widened considerably a short while later, with a raging torrent running under the street eating away at the earth foundations and further weakening the road.

The footage was shot in the mid afternoon on 29 July, where an eyewitness identified as Ms Liu told local media that the people in the car jumped free when it started to sink into the ground, and had therefore escaped almost certain death.

Traffic police later sealed off Nujiang Street where the hole appeared in order to deal with the problem.