Tulsarama time capsule a 1957 Plymouth Belvedere
On June 15th, 1957 the residents of Tulsa, Oklahoma buried a 1957 Plymouth Belvedere beneath a downtown sidewalk in front of the Tulsa County Courthouse. At the time Tulsa has more cars per capita than any U.S. city besides Los Angeles and a fierce rivalry with Oklahoma city. The time capsule stunt was meant as a way to celebrate the city's love of the automobile and one-up Oklahoma City.
The car was filled with all sorts of 1957 mementos, including a case of Schlitz beer, 10 gallons of gasoline, 5 quarts of oil, the contents of a lady's purse, as well as photos and maps of the Tulsa area. No one knows what condition the Plymouth is in, but townsfolk from the era say city officials took every precaution to ensure the car would still be pristine when it was exhumed. That date will come next year during Tulsa's centennial on June 15th, 2007, fifty years to the day after the car was buried.
[Source: BuriedCar, ForwardLook.net]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
JC Whitless 8:10PM (8/10/2006)
I so want to hear that push button tranny go "Grr-clunk" as its brakes drag up and out of the hole....
/has a push button tranny
//the younger crowd can't figure out how to move the car
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farris 8:42PM (8/10/2006)
umm... why is this news NOW as opposed to next june 17th?
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farris 8:46PM (8/10/2006)
d'oh!
i meant june 15th
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ken 9:08PM (8/10/2006)
Can't wait to read the anti-American car haters say something like "I bet if the car was a Toyota/Honda it could start right up and you could drive right to Barrett-Jackson.
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Chris 9:15PM (8/10/2006)
Ken raises an excellent point. Why do Japanese car owners hate America?
Maybe The Colbert Report could do an expose.
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Stratojet 9:27PM (8/10/2006)
They don't hate America. They simply aren't concernede about what is going on in the world around them. This is the me myself and I culture pushed to the extreme.
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gbh 9:49PM (8/10/2006)
If it was stored properly (big honkin'if) throw in some gas, oil, and a fresh battery it should fire right up.
(as much as anything with a carb can 'fire right up')
Personally, I'd manually oil the valvetrain and a few drops of oil in each cylinder and hand crank it a bit. I've seen things that hadn't run in 20 years fire up just fine as long as they were put up correctly.
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John B 10:48PM (8/10/2006)
No comment about the car but I would let someone else try the beer.
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iQuack 10:58PM (8/10/2006)
This Japanese car owner does NOT hate America. I LOVE AMERICA.
But when non-American companies make better products than domestic companies, I'll buy the imports. The competition will help improve the quality of domestic products, too. If it weren't for Honda and Toyota, GM cars wouldn't be as good as they are.
It's not my fault that GM and Ford dropped the ball--I've liked the GM cars I've had in the past.
Just so happens that at the times I was car-shopping more recently, GM didn't have anything I wanted to buy--it's their fault, not mine.
So long as companies like Toyota, Honda, and many others build cars in the U.S. and employ American workers, it's non un-American to buy those import brands.
Overpaying for a substandard car to support UAW workers living in a dream world is ridiculous.
With respect to the topic here, the '57 Plymouth was a radical style at that time. Ads were headed: "Suddenly, It's 1960!" I remember that car and that year, too.
Seems to me that 50 years isn't all that long before opening a time capsule. I guess time goes fast when you're having fun;-).
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Mal Fuller 11:01PM (8/10/2006)
I have almost always owned US cars and still do. But I can tell you 'cause I was around in 1957, that Tulsa had the right idea when they buried this turkey. Mopar sheet metal had no reinforcement, bracing or sound deadening. The noise made by shutting the hood would wake the dead! '57 Fords weren't much better. It was no wonder the '57 Chevy became so universally admired. They should let it Rest In Peace (piece(s)?
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UK-KID 11:33PM (8/10/2006)
Ken // Chris !!! Are you two for real ??
So anybody who shows dislike for a particular product is an American Hater ??
Did it ever occur to you that the reason they dislike these cars is because said cars are inferior ?
Your imagined world where everybody who has a different view from you is wrong and hates America is very Warped indeed and you really need to wake up from your Meth-Induced Coma (Im hoping it is drug related because if it isnt then it means you are actually Compound Fools)
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iQuack 11:37PM (8/10/2006)
Yes, the '57 Plymouth wasn't too solid--kind of a big, empty shell of a thing that looked sleek.
The 1957 year brought the first of the torsion bar ("Torsionaire") suspension in Chrysler cars--designed that way to save space more than anything else. Had pushbutton A/T that appeared the year before in '56.
Those cars were quite large, too--cars grew too much in the '50s and '60s. It took the energy crunch of '73 to put a stop to that, but more recent cars that were once sensibly sized are becoming too big again.
The current Honda Civic is bigger than the Accord of 25 years ago.
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Dan 11:39PM (8/10/2006)
Why is this news today, and not ten months from now?
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Kendrew Leung 11:57PM (8/10/2006)
slow day for news....
yeah wouldn't this be more approriate on june 14 2007... where people would actually realize hey! they're taking out the time capsule tmr...
instead of now... which is like time capsules coming out in 10 months... meh.
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Steve B. 1:16AM (8/11/2006)
Right... Japanese car owners hate America because they don't buy shoddy products.
I love my family, but if my dad started a car company that built crap cars, I wouldn't buy his.
/Had a GM car, had nothing but problems, ditched it. Went back to Honda.
//Serve in USAF.
/// Buy Hondas even though I can buy domestics tax free at wholesale.
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iQuack 1:52AM (8/11/2006)
If GM made a car as good as a Honda, I'd buy the GM car. But they don't, so it's an easy decision to buy the Honda.
Why should I buy a POS just because it's an American brand if the brand is inferior?
If the GM brand is inferior because GM's costs are too high as a result of promises the company had to make to the UAW to avert a strike decades ago, why should I buy decontented crap when I can buy quality now?
I'd rather support the non-union American workers who make Hondas and tell the UAW to go screw itself.
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Ben 2:20AM (8/11/2006)
You know you belly aching whining foreign lovers are starting to get
to me. O.K. Mr I Quack.... ( even unlucky #13) which is a good name
for you.... I have a new Acura TL and the door all of a sudden will
not open from the inside... so I open it by reaching outside. Sure...
the dealer will fix it but you know something... I have had a LOT of
Ford products and NEVER have I had this problem. In fact.... all my Fords have been problem free except for one older van.So when Ford
comes out with the new Lincoln MKS in '08 I am switching back. You guys
think your foreign stuff is so great... well guess what.... there
not!!
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Kit 4:43AM (8/11/2006)
iQuack - thanks for information!
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TDIMeister 7:08AM (8/11/2006)
My, my, we sure have come a long way in 50 years minus about 10 months, haven't we? :-)
Note the gap between the hood and passenger-side front fender in the picture. You would never see those kind of body gaps even in the cheapest of cars of today coming from developing countries.
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Tony 7:18AM (8/11/2006)
"Note the gap between the hood and passenger-side front fender in the picture. You would never see those kind of body gaps even in the cheapest of cars of today coming from developing countries."
Yeah because, you know, manufacturing processes in the late 1950's were exacttly like they are now.
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