1973 Ford Mustang: It Wasn’T Easy Getting This Old Stag Out Of A Flooded Grave.

It’s great to see this old Stang being rescued from a watery grave, but getting it out was not an easy task.

Picture this; it’s the mid-eighties and someone is very keen to get rid of a car. It may be a stolen vehicle, or they’re in desperate need of the insurance money. They want to hide the vehicle, somewhere that no one will look. What do they do? Well, one option is to sink it in a river. This may well be what happened to this 1973 Ford Mustang Mach 1 in Portland, Oregon. Or, it could just have been a freak accident, we’ll probably never know.

The River That Just Keeps Giving

Most old classic cars are discovered in barns and garages, where they’ve typically been gathering dust for far too long. This 1973 Mustang has a much different story. Submerged in the Tualatin River for the best part of four decades, its finally getting rescued.

It all started with an anonymous tip-off. Allegedly from an old get-away-driver, informing the guys at ‘Adventures With Purpose’ that multiple vehicles were in the river, located close to a boat ramp. So they checked it out, and found not just one, but six cars.

It was during the team’s last visit, while recovering a Mazda RX7, that they stumbled on the submerged Mustang. Now they’re back to try and rescue it, and it’s a pretty big task.

Recovering The Submerged ’73 Mustang

A team of scuba divers first assess the car, which is approximately four meters down, and try to prep it for removal. When watching the video footage, we get to see just how bad the visibility is, it’s really hard to see anything through the mucky waters.

One of the divers surfaces with an update “Every window on the car is intact. There could be someone, or some bodies inside, we don’t know” he says, before plunging back in.

The water is deathly cold. The guys have to wear heavy-duty dry suits to cope with the water’s sub-zero temperature. The old Ford is laying upside down, and they have no idea how bad its condition is. If they try to winch it out, and place too much force on the car, it could just fall apart. So they have to carry out the work carefully.

They decide to use inflatable lift bags, and try to float the car up towards the surface first before winching. Each of the orange bags can lift 1,500 lbs of weight. The team attach two to the sunken muscle car. The floating bags raise the front end of the car off the riverbed, but the back remains in the mud.

After attaching some chains to the car they start winching it, using a small truck located on the ramp. Then the worst happens, they unfortunately tear the Mustang’s V8 engine clean out of the chassis.
One of the divers has to abandon the search after he snags his dry suit on a piece of rusty metal. The others use chains and large hooks to harness the car. With the help of a second truck, they try to winch it in again. This time the Mustang gets caught up in some rocks, and fails to budge.

“I honestly don’t think it’s gonna work” says one of the team scratching his head. They attach two more float bags to the rear of the Mustang, which successfully lifts it slightly off the riverbed. The crew manage to pull it closer to the bank before it stalls again, just six or seven feet below the surface.

“We just have to yank it out” says the lead diver “We need more pulling power”. So they make a call to a local towing company that is happy to oblige. The recovery work re-commences but spills into a second day.
With even more float bags, they give it another try. As they winch it in, the Mustang finally starts moving. It looks like a submarine that’s about to emerge from periscope depth. Then, for the first time in 40 years, we suddenly see the classic Ford break the surface of the water.

Finally, Back On Dry Land

When they haul the old car up on to the river bank, we get a closer look at it. It’s in pretty bad shape. The Ford’s front-end is heavily damaged, and it’s covered in rust.

The winch struggles to pull the car out. The Mustang is extremely heavy, it’s packed full of mud. To reduce its weight the team have to start digging. They have to smash the windows in to gain entry, and then shovel out the gray silty mud. “Its official, there are no skeleton remains in here” shouts one of the crew.

At this point the old muscle car looks like it might still be salvageable, but sadly that possibility is completely ruled out when they start winching it onto the trailer. We hear a bunch of loud cracks and snaps, as the Mustang’s rotting bodywork just crumbles. It’s a grim sight to watch.

One thing that niggled us was; how did the Mustang end up upside down? Well, luckily one of the local volunteers provides an answer. Way back, there used to be a bridge over this section of the river, so the old stang my well have had a shove. In which case it’s very likely that it would half-somersault on entry in the river.

After two days hard work, mostly with volunteers, they finally managed to pull out the Mustang. Regardless of the fact that it’s now just a mangled wreck, they cleared the river. Work like this plays a crucial part in helping to save the environment, and we applaud everyone involved. It’s fantastic what these guys are doing, we hope that they continue with their clean-ups, and we’re keen to see what they find next.