Ford Mustang Pulled From Cape Fear River

Feb 26, 2024 2 min read
Ford Mustang Pulled From Cape Fear River

Another muscle car gets pulled out of water.


Why do so many special cars end up in the bottom of a lake? Or stuck in a sunken cargo ship in the middle of the ocean? It seems like water and cars are mixing way too often for our liking. The latest victim of the water grave is a fox body Mustang that has fire damage, and a mystery behind it, naturally. Photos of a 1980s Ford Mustang surfaced on line of the poor Pony Car being craned out of the river from Cape Fear River in North Carolina.

The story of how it got found is quite incredible. Earlier last week, a fisherman was fishing in the Cape Fear River near Riegelwood. Not looking for American machinery, the man spotted the car on a piece of sonar equipment meant to find, well, fish - too bad it wasn’t a Camaro, there would be a good joke to make there. He apparently knew exactly what he was looking at as he reported there was a car 19 feet underwater to the authorities.

After the car was located, the Wildlife Resources Commission and sheriff’s office used divers from Acme-Delco-Riegelwood to work to pull the Mustang out of the water. It’s said that the full recovery took more than 10 hours to pull the fire and water damaged Mustang out of the water.

The Mustang sported a vanity tag, which might be helpful if it hadn’t been in the water so long the DMV no longer had records of it. There was a rumor of a drowning accompanying the car, but no evidence to support it. Is anyone out there missing a 1980s Mustang?


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