Tragic mystery of 1957 Plymouth Belvedere buried for 50 years as a ‘prize’ – and its shocking transformation
A TOWN had buried a brand-new car as a time capsule prize and was shocked to see that a bomb-proof ‘tomb’ failed to protect it.
Many were shocked to find out that the vault designed to withstand a nuclear blast was not waterproof.
In 1957, the town of Tulsa, Oklahoma came up with a unique way to bring the community together: take a brand-new 1957 Plymouth Belvedere with only four miles on the odometer and bury it.
The car was called Ms. Belvedere, and she was buried under the lawn of the city’s Town Hall in a reinforced “bomb-proof” concrete vault, where she would remain for 50 years.
To make things even more enticing, the city decided to up the ante by having residents guess what the population would be in 2007.
Whoever guessed the correct amount would be handed the preserved vehicle, free of charge, The Magnum stated in a video on their YouTube channel (@themagnum).
Miss Belvedere was wrapped in shrink wrap and filled with relics of the era, and a list of people who made their population guesses.
50 years later, nearly 9,000 people gathered around to see the unveiling of the supposedly perfectly protected vehicle.
However, Miss Belvedere did not get a happy ending, as the concrete tomb flooded to the roof with groundwater, and nearly covered the vehicle, suspension components, and engine with a thick layer of rust.
The engine was full of silt and rusted completely shut, and the interior was destroyed.
Even the most recognizable classic car restorers lost hope for Ms. Belvedere, saying the rust was too severe to push forward.
The engine would never turn over, and the paint had bubbled and was effectively destroyed by the five decades it spent fully submerged in water.
The resident who’d guessed the population figures correctly had unfortunately died before he was able to receive the car, so it was passed on to the man’s sister – who was 100 years old.
For several years the vehicle’s owner was rejected by museum after museum to house the destroyed treasure before a man saved Miss Belvedere from rotting away on someone’s property.
Owner Dwight Foster finally sold it to the Historic Auto Attractions Museum of Illinois, where the car is on display full-time for visitors to enjoy.
The exhibit has fully interactive elements where people can learn more about the failure of the concrete entombment, the social change the event made in the city, and the severity of the damage.
Miss Belvedere has not been fully restored, though the condition of the vehicle is vastly different from when it was first pulled from the ground.