Here's The Sad Yet Joyous Sight Of A Mazda RX-7 Being Pulled From A River
A section of the Tualatin River near Portland, Oregon is something of a car graveyard. Working off a tip, Adventures with Purpose, a YouTube channel all about recovering submerged cars (quite a niche, but consider us subscribed!), has been able to give the world a closer look at the watery vehicular resting place.
Using scuba equipment, the team found no less than six vehicles at the site, including a Chevrolet LUV pick-up truck, a Ford Mustang Mach 1, and even a first-generation Mazda RX-7.
The latter find was raised from the 12-foot-deep riverbed, where it’s clearly spent some time. The sheer weight of the water has caused the roof to cave in slightly, but overall, it’s held up reasonably well.
The Mustang is solid enough to recover too, so hopefully, we’ll see that raised from the murky depths at a later date.
As for why the vehicles are all dumped in that location, there are a number of possible explanations. It could be fraud or theft-related, but in the case of the pick-up, it was allegedly ditched there 20 years ago by the owner’s girlfriend as revenge for being cheated on…
Via Road and Track
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
Hopefully someone will restore them to their former glory
F
I hope they do restore them but after so many years underwater I am unsure if that would be viable, I mean think of the rust etc…
Apparently freshwater preserves some things quite well but yeah, I once inherited an FB RX7 and it died from rust without being submerged.
That is cool
I thought the roof would only cave in if there was differential pressure above and below the roof; with water in the cabin I don’t think there would be much real force to crush the roof.
Window and door seals are actually pretty effective at keeping water out, even under pressure. The car definitely would sink to the bottom while still having some air in it’s cabin, giving the pressure difference needed to buckle the roof.
The body might be recoverable, but there’s no way that the RX-7 will get entirely restored. It’s not worth enough or rare enough to be given so much work: the interior is 100% completely shot, I wouldn’t be surprised if the floor is completely gone, and the body most likely hasn’t been totally spared either. Maybe it’ll get restored for the status (to be able to say “it spent decades underwater”), but other than that it’s not really worth it. It’s still relatively easy to find an FB chassis in reasonnable condition for not that much.
Still, it’s better kept outside of a lake, if not just for pollution, but also because, when prices will rise, it’ll be there