Belvedere time capsule not looking good
 

In 1957 Tulsa buried a 1957 Belvedere as a 50 year time capsule.

They are digging it up and it doesn't look good for the car.





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http://www.kotv.com/e-clips/?id=6712

http://www.tulsachevys.com/Images/bu...s/DSC08671.JPG

Lots of pics here

http://www.tulsachevys.com/Images/buriedcar/index.html

these "unsealing of the vault" things never seem to go well.

Just ask Geraldo....

Bugger!

well at least we have something to look forward to, now that the sopranos is over and done with. hopefully a better conclusion anyway.

With that red mud, it sure looks like Oklahoma

If they used the same concrete as they used on the Interstates, I am not surprised at all.

was it a hemi ?

prolly either the 301 V8 or the straight six, I don't think the 392 hemi was available in that car.

More pix here: http://www.buriedcar.com/photo_gallery_new.htm

Damn that car looks like it spent the last 50 years at the bottom of a muddy river.

If ya gave that project to an MIT engineer, he/she would have repeatedly dipped the car into solutions of charged polymer chains dissolved in water, controling the surface texture of the finish. Each time the substrate is dipped into solution, another layer of charged polymer coats the surface, adding texture and making the material more porous. Silica nanoparticles are then added to create an even rougher texture that helps trap water droplets.

The material is then coated with a Teflon-like substance, making it superhydrophobic. Once that water-repellent layer is laid down, layers of charged polymers and nanoparticles can be added in certain areas, using a properly formulated water/alcohol solvent mixture, thereby creating a superhydrophilic pattern to vent off unwanted moisture.

To make it even more interesting, they would get it all funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the National Science Foundation and make a tidy sum on the side!

(Those Okies would be left wondering why their thumbs were still up their butts!)

((BTW - Professors Robert Cohen and Michael Rubner of MIT are actually involved in this work.))

Man, I hope I don't look like that at 50...

Hopefully the 1998 engineers did better. Click on 1st hyperlink for the video.

YouTube - 1998 Prowler

A centennial time capsule, interred on Jan. 17, 1998, in honor of the City's 100th birthday, is buried at Centennial Park. The time capsule, scheduled to be unearthed in the year 2048, includes items such as a prototype of the 1998 Plymouth Prowler, a City of Tulsa Financial Report, student essays on what Tulsa will be like in the year 2048, and Tulsa restaurant menus.

easy $150,000 car at the next barrett-jackson show.
as they would describe it: "a rare survivor".

Anyone have any photos that do not come back with 404 errors?

That looks. . . um. . . bad.

cant imagine what the winner of that hunk of rust must feel like...

note to self: "self, scratch the Porsche 930 time capsule idea in the front yard...continue driving and enjoying the car daily...run the wheels off of it. Remember to instruct the kids to fill up the deep hole that you had them dig..."

That car can heal itself. I've seen it happen in Christine. Only that last photo linked for me, and those pics sucked. There was a decent pic in the newspaper, but it's not shown online. Too bad that bunker didn't protect the car!

...and FWIW, when I first saw the title of this thread, I was expecting to see Mr. Belvedere's rotting corpse. But that wouldn't make sense, 'cause if he'd been in a tomb all these years, then how'd we get that "classic" '80s show?
http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/3...lvederewg8.jpg
http://img512.imageshack.us/img512/2...eonlinedo4.jpg

Hay, how come Bob Uecker isn't in the "front row"?

I crack me up.

I think the fact that they buried a can of gasoline along with the car (because they weren't sure if gasoline would be available 50 years later), shows pure genius at work too. I wonder if they added a bottle of Stabil? :)

For what it's worth, some of what appears to be rust is actually just mud. It's hard to see in any of the photos on the internet but, if you were able to see the car in person, you will have noticed that they cleaned a section of the front bumper and the chrome under all the mud was still decent. Obviously, cleaning the whole car wouldn't result in a perfect Belvedere, so they probably decided that to keep it in its current condition made more sense from a historical perspective.

JR