Feb. 27 (UPI) — The Jeep Wagoneer buried beneath a Massachusetts sand dune for 40 years has been removed from its tomb, but time has taken a noticeable toll on the vehicle.
John Musnuff, whose mother Barbara, inherited the property on Truro’s Ballston Beach from family in 2014, said the white Jeep Wagoneer with green interior was parked inside a garage on the property when it started having trouble with a fuel line.
The vehicle ended up trapped for 40 years when a nearby sand dune grew to cover — and fill — the garage with sand.
The Jeep was exhumed Friday by a team of diggers led by a Truro city worker. The remains of the car were finally pulled out by an excavator, giving Musnuff his first look at the vehicle since he was a small child. The vehicle had gone through a dramatic change after being subjected to decades of oxidation and being crushed by sand and the garage’s collapsed roof.
“I don’t think he envisioned that it would come out in pieces,” Kay Musnuff, John’s wife, told the Cape Cod Times.
Musnuff decided to hang on to a V8 emblem from the body of the vehicle and its hubcaps.
“There’s not much else to keep,” Musnuff said.
Musnuff’s brother had earlier predicted the car would not be intact when it was raised from beneath the dune.
“It’s probably going to fall apart like something out of Indiana Jones,” Basil Musnuff said.
The Wagoneer isn’t the only car to recently emerge after decades in an unusual place — a rare 1959 Ferrari 250GT PF Coupe was recently removed from a one-bedroom Los Angeles apartment that served as its storage space for 30 years.
