Why was it there in the first place?
It’s always fascinating to see a car which has been dumped in a body of water for a long time, like this Corvette which sat in an Oregon river for decades. As you’ll see in the included video, a specialized scuba team working with a tow truck are able to extract the Chevy from its watery grave, removing a hazard to fish, boaters, and everyone living downstream.
This same group pulled over 40 cars from waterways in Tennessee, which you can see here.
Thanks to the fiberglass body, the yellow Corvette doesn’t look so bad as it was pulled from the water. But the frame is probably like graham cracker now, which is probably why the rear and front ends started to disintegrate before they could get the Chevy onto the tow truck.
Many times we don’t know why cars found in lakes, rivers, and other bodies of water are there. Sure, some people always speculate the reason is insurance fraud, and that’s probably the case many times, but not always. As detailed in the video, this Corvette was reported stolen and the man who owned it no longer lives in the country. This might have been a case of insurance fraud, but it also could’ve legitimately been stolen, used to commit a crime or multiple crimes, then dumped. We’ll probably never know the whole story.
This Corvette was found by a boat launch in the Williamette River in the Portland, Oregon area. The team which generously extracted it is Adventures With Purpose, a group whose videos we have featured many times. They work with two truck companies and city crews to remove cars sunk in bodies of water all over the United States.
These guys making recovering sunken cars look easy, but it’s obviously not. Another team tried to recover this Corvette the week before and failed miserably, only tearing off a front wheel without budging the rest of the car.
Check out the video, which was from back in 2019. It’s definitely a cool one to watch, especially considering by this boat launch there was still a Jaguar and Volkswagen Beetle submerged in the river.
