I remember the car being dug up in 2007 after being underground for 50 years and it was in pretty bad shape. HRP
https://www.hemmings.com/stories/20...ing-miss-belvedere-finds-new-home-in-a-museum Ended up in a museum. My wife and I went to Tulsa to watch the circus...it was a blast!
I'd entirely forgot about that oops. I now remember it was a big deal when they dug it up. Wasn't Boyd and his crew there with intetions to fire it up once it came out of the hole? Only for a huge letdown of seeing it in water and rusting away. What a bummer, though putting it in a museum is more than I ever thought would happen with it from that time. Would have been a prime candidate for the crusher.
google is helpful sometimes I grew up literally 4 miles from where the Plymouth was buried and heard about it growing up. Huge disappointment when they dug it up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Belvedere https://www.facebook.com/Historicautoattractions/
HaHa...back in 1961, I had a 57 savoy 2dr hardtop. It was bubbling rust above the freaking headlights...in 1961!!!
I was in Tulsa to witness the digging up of Miss Belvedere, as Squirrel said, a real circus. Items put in the glove compartment fell to the floor as the compartment disintegrated. Writings on the tire with a ball point pen were still legible. A glass five gallon jar filled with gasoline was in the trunk. I guess that in 1957 someone thought gasoline would not be available in 2007. Boyd Coddingham and his team was there to start the car, did not happen. All in all it was a good trip, as you don't see this everyday.
They shoulda used it to make the Suddenly tribute car. At least it's the right body style, unlike the "clone".
Fitting and proper...Boyd and the boys + drama not starting at the end of the show. Kinda...laughable? More...typical.
I think UltraOne, the company that worked on getting it de-rusted, actually did a pretty good job, considering it came out as a big orange fur-ball. It sounds like it's much rougher than it looks, but it really doesn't look too bad, at least for a display piece. It's really a perfect car for a museum, since it's never going to be road worthy again, but it's quite a sight to see, with a great story to tell. I'm really glad someone took the time to clean/preserve it as well as can be done, and that it's saved and on display for the world to see.
there was a similar story in hemmings many years ago about a guy who bought a new 54 ish vette and had a brick wall built around it in his shoe store. same deal, it was rotten from humidity sitting in there all those years
https://bangordailynews.com/2013/01...brunswick-for-27-years-could-be-worth-175000/ https://www.corvettemuseum.org/cemented-in-history-1954-entombed-corvette-joins-museum-collection/ https://www.barrett-jackson.com/Med...in-history-the-tale-of-the-entombed-corvette/ https://www.corvetteblogger.com/201...ins-the-national-corvette-museums-collection/
well, thanks for posting the corvette story. quite a different outcome from what i remember when the story first was in hemmings. i thought at the time they all thought the frame and much more was rotten. however, that would be from my memory, which is becoming more questionable by the day! thanks again.
Damn, I must be living under a rock, I never heard of Mrs Belvedere until I saw the video and read the thread.
The man who “won” the contest lived near Hagerstown, MD. His heirs, 2 ladies as I recall, were a bit overwhelmed by their prize. I guess they were more than happy to let the rust remover company take a swing at it. Last I heard, it was sitting around waiting for a museum somewhere to take it on. I think the Tulsa folks “buried” another car, Plymouth Prowler?, in a new stunt- but this time the car lives above ground in a car-mausoleum. It seems she has found a home at the Historic Auto Museum in Rosie, Illinois. The City of Tulsa tuned her down.
Actually, that Corvette was in pretty good shape; I knew someone who worked in that store as a teenager, and he said there was a trap door in the office above it that you could look down on the car from.
The Jalopy Journal
