Hello again from Germany,
well, the show is over and the unfortunately the Belvedere turned out to be as bad as one could expect after discovering the water.
Thanks to everybody who shared his/her pictures, so I could take part from overseas. Over here you get only little information about the whole thing, some vintage car forums have links to some pages. Using this forum I am as close as i can get from Germany...
I did not see much about the interior, so my question to those of you who saw the car personally: was it comletely rotten inside? What was the smell? Just being curious...
If anyone has pictures from the engine or the interior, please mail them to
jof@gmx.li - thanks in advance!
I read in one of the articles that "in 1957 Tulsa's civic leaders hoped to dazzle their future descendants with the scope of their own technological prowess" - well, they failed with that. It looks like the technological prowess (or progress?) was not that what they expected back then (please don't get me wrong - this is my personal point of view).
What I think is remarkable, that everyone was talking about the names and the population-guesses on microfilm. But they found nothing but some postcards when I interpreted the news correctly. How could this happen? Burying a car is so unusual, an the guesses were such an important thing (since the winner had the chance of owning a "brand new car"), so why and how could the false information of microfilms sprread and last for 50 years? This makes me think of other information even longer ago - what's true and what is rumour? I hope they will have some more investigation and find a clue.
A few words to the water issue: over here most of our houses have a concrete or brick built cellar. One of the most important thing is to find the right sealing (waterproofing), so the first thing the architect does is getting an soil expertise with information about the groundwater. If groundwater is to be expected, a waterproof concrete is the first choice and the whole concrete gets a "paintjob" with sealing material (over here they use a black material which looks like tar). And of course the seams (joints?) get a special treatment.
Did anyone of you who personally got to see the shelter notice anything of that? I am just curious...
Again, thank you very much for your help that made me take part of the whole event from far away! Although the result could have been much better, what happened just happened, and nobody can turn time back to make it different.
Therefore I suggest to not restore the car, but leave it as it is and show it at the local museum as a unique part of Tulsa-history, as an effort to preserve something to the next generation, which unfortunately failed - there is nothing wrong with that, it's history now.
It is possible to restore a car around just on nut or bolt - but the result is not the car from back then, but a product of today. This unique time witness would just become another one of a bunch of restored Plymouth in the world.
What there is now is a very unique thing, and I am still excited looking at the pictures of the car back and now.
Again, that is just my personal opinion, and I will watch what is going to happen.
Best regards from Germany
Jörg