It’s out of the ground

A little more than an hour ago, the 1957 Plymouth Belvedere that had been in a buried for five decades in a time capsule in downtown Tulsa, Okla., was hoisted out of the ground and placed on a flatbed truck.

The car is now undergoing inspections by classic-car restorer Boyd Coddington. The protective wrapping will be taken off and Belvedere unveiled tonight in front of a sellout crowd of more than 7,000 at the Tulsa Convention Center. It will be televised live by KOTV of Tulsa and streamed live on the Internet at KOTV.com. Festivities begin at 6:30 CST.

It rained much of the morning, but it lessened to no more than occasional sprinkles by car-lift time.

I cannot even guess how many people were in downtown to view this spectacle. It was thousands, easily. People were lined up for blocks down Denver Avenue.

The Belvedere also will be on display this weekend during a car show in the Tulsa Convention Center throughout the weekend as part of the buried-car festivities downtown. So if you missed the unearthing and unveiling, you can still see it for free.

The next two photos aren’t as good, as they were shot from a distance, but show the crane moving the Belvedere onto the flatbed.

More about the formerly buried Belvedere will be coming once the dust settles later tonight.

UPDATE: KOTV.com already has some video clips posted. It’s been slow to load, though. The server is getting slammed by Internet traffic.

UPDATE2: The Tulsa World has an early story about the unearthing.

7 thoughts on “It’s out of the ground

  1. This was just on the news in LA. You could see a portion of one tail fin and tail light and the bumper, it looked pretty rusty.

  2. It’s hard to tell whether the brown is rust, or muck mixed with the original Cosmoline they coated it with.

    Either way, we’ll know tonight.

  3. We had to be with a few feet of each other today. I left before the car came by on the trailer but I remember both of those white heads and I have photos from nearly the same angle but with more folks in front of me. Maybe I’ll be able to post a picture of the back of your head;-) Guess I need to be more observant of the crowd.

  4. I will be discussing the Plymouth and its conditon on Bounce Radio tonight following the Route 66 Radio Show (www.bounceradio.net 5 PM PDT). The time difference between CDT and PDT should give me a chance to see if the car was damaged by the water seepage, or if it survived its 50 year ordeal.

    And I am still wondering: Does the winner of the car have to pay the parking ticket that is locked in the glovebox?

  5. Christine. Maybe it will have one more chance. The abandoned, rusted
    hulk may just light up a headlight..and show us all….too bad but the
    spirit lives on….rust never sleeps

  6. Hi all
    we are in New Zealand and cannot find anything on our TV about the event….( we do have CNN and FOX) can anyone give me a web page address so we can see what the car looks like. thanks. My husband has been excited for weeks about this after he read an article in a magazine about 6 months ago.

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