Forgive if this is a but has anyone seen this episode?? I only caught them talking about it on another episode.

Supposedly they take a C4 and try to bust the fact or myth that a Corvette with a decomposed human body in it had to be parted out because the smell couldn't be removed.

Apparently they take a nasty bloated dead pigs body and lock it inside the C4 and leave it for some time locked in a storage container.

I was wondering if anyone saw this and if it was a nice running car or a wrecking yard carcass. It looked fairly nice, the little I saw. It was obviously an 84-90 model. If it was a nice car then it sucks that they would do that to a nice Corvette just to test the tale.

 

odd....about six months ago an older man at my work and i got caught up into talking about vettes, and how much he likes them. he told me that about ten years ago he had an opportunity to buy a vette that didn't have very many miles on it, and it was going to super cheap(i don't remember all of the details). he said the reason that it was going for so cheap was because the previous owner appartently got drunk and spun it off the road somewhere and the snowfall had covered the car, he died of hypothermia or something(once again can't remember) and the car sat under the snow with him in it for the entire winter and when they found the car no one would buy it because it stunk so bad. he said he went to test drive it, but he couldn't sit in it for more than 5 minutes or something because of the smell. i do remember the selling price of it was something outrageously low though. weird that you mention it. i would like to hear the truth behind it, so i hope someone replies!

 

I am no CSI guy but wouldn't a body in the snow freeze and not decompose?Sounds like your buddy started the myth

 

yeah, i found it odd too, problem is, the guy is a doctor and he didn't seem to question it. i still question him though, so i can't wait until someone posts if the myth is busted or not!! haha, people do get caught up in their stories.

 

I've seen the episode and it was a early c4 in nice condition. The interior was obviously trash after it and no matter how much they tried they could get the smell completely out but they were still able to sell the car even with the smell and no interior. Adam liked driving the car so much before the experiment he bought one for himself.

 

I dont think this one was in the snow. Were they able to get regular C4 value or what they paid for it?? Or did they part it out or sell it dirt cheap??

Did they consider the myth busted? Or it a possbility??

I dont think I would want a car that somebody died and rotted in.Thats pretty creepy!
I would buy it cheap for parts though.

 

It was a silver '87. They put a dead pig in the car in the place of a human for obvious reasons. The body was in nice condition but it had around 250,000 miles on it, with 50,000 on a newer engine. They ended up selling it for $2000 to a guy who wanted just the engine and transmission out it. The myth was considered plausible. I believe the one Adam bought was also an 84-90 vette and its white.

 

I heard the "Myth" back in the '70's when I lived in Maine.

I have also heard about a woman who's husband died and she didn't drive so she advertised her late husbands "67 Chevy" for sale "$400.00 or best offer." When the woman opened the garage door there sat a mint '67 427 4 speed 'Vert Marina Blue with the Stinger hood. When he said that the car wasn't worth $400.00 (meaning it was worth way more) she said "Okay "$350.00 but not a penny less". Heard this one in th early '90's.

 

Ahhhh, a high mileage case eh? But it's still a Vette!

All in the name of science I guess.

Thanks for the skinny on the show. Maybe I'll catch a re-run of it some day.
I guess we've all heard a tall tale or 2 growing up about Vettes. I remember one in the 70's about a worker at a factory who just needed cheap transportation for work and answered an ad in the paper that read "old chevy car needs work $400". Then supposedly he got there and it was an elderly lady and it was a cherry low miles 57 Vette with the wheels off and on blocks stored properly by her son who had been killed in the military. The work needed was the wheels needed to be put on and some plastic dust cover pieces covering intereior and motor and body needed to be removed. Being an honest guy, he tried to give her more, like in the story you heard, and she misunderstood and said Ok $350 but thats as low as I can go. He gave her $500 but she would take no more for it. So he got a cherry showroom new 57 for $500.

I think I also remember one about a dead guy C3 Vette selling cheap too.

Who knows for sure what of these stories is true or "myth". I always just kind of thought they are either just fictional tall tales. That or a bunch of tales that spawned from one or two real incidents.

Who else has heard what??

 

Snopes.com is the place to go check out any urban legend you ever hear. Its also a great place to check anytime you get some crap in your email that looks ridiculous and is passed off as fact. Here are links to both those legends.
http://www.snopes.com/autos/cursed/deathcar.asp
http://www.snopes.com/autos/dream/deadson.asp

 

I've heard this story several times over the years. Another is the $30,000 Vette or Porche etc. that gets sold for $50. A couple is going through a divorce and the judge orders the husband to sell his car and give the money to his wife. Heh, heh I can almost believe this one, I would do it if that was the case.

 

Was a nice car. Sold cheap also.

 

I downloaded that same show the other day. it is about 20min long and i don't know how to post videos. if anybody wants they can tell me and i can try to post it. it was sad what they did to that car.

O yeah. and the myth was busted because no matter what they can always sell a car or at least have someone take it just to get ride of it.

 

this was in the paper a few years ago, only the husband ran off with his secretary and told his wife to sell his porsche and send him the money. she sold it to the first guy who came to look at it and sold it realllllly cheap.

 

This myth went around in the early 50,s, the car always was a Cadillic with a body in it,couldn"t get the smell out.At the same time the Fish carburator urban myth went around, 50 miles / gal. in a Cadillac.

 

I saw it. It was a decent example of an early C4. What a flagrant waste!

 

Here's a true story for you. A friend of mine in high school in about 1987 or so, had a buddy who went to another school who was shopping for a fiat, not sure what type. Anyhoo, there was an ad in the paper for one, but it didn't say what kind, was a 1977 or 78 I think, $5000 as I recall. Turns out the owner was some lawyer guy that had passed, and his wife was selling some of his toys, kind of like a limited estate sale. She didn't know what kind of car it was, and told them to just come and look. So the guy and his dad get there, and it turns out to be a Ferrari 308 GTB. Not much as Ferraris go, but you can imagine! So the guys just can't believe it, and I'm sure think about buying it, but they tell her that the car is in fact a Ferrari, and is worth MUCH more. They didn't buy it, but a few days later, the lady called them back and offered it to them for the original asking price of $5000, simply because she was so impressed that they would point out the error when they could have made out like bandits (the fact that she wsa already a millionairess didn't hurt I'm sure). So anyway, they actually buy the car for $5000, then sell it for much more, the guy ended up w/ an IROC or Mustang GT or something, and kept the rest of the cash. The local paper did a story on it and everything. They interviewed the lady (she knew they would resell it) and she explained her desire to "reward" their good character, and was pleased that he would have some extra cash for college or whatever. It was kind of a feel good story, and a lesson to do the right thing. True story.

 

He was ing you.
If something smells bad, the smell is worst at the very beginning. Live with it for 5 minutes and your olfactory sensors become aclimated to it and it seems to be come less objectionable. Besides, his story is verbatim to the urban legend.
I saw part of that same show, but can't remember how it turned out....I would think the Vette with the pig in it would be useless for anything other than some exterior parts.

Larry
code5coupe

 

Several holes in that old myth:
One, what wife wouldn't know how much her husband paid for a car?
Two, what person wouldn't make an attempt to find out a value for something they were going to sell?
Three, unless they were hermits (and not many Corvette owners are), there would have been friends, neighbors, children, etc. who knew about the car and would have told her about its value.
Four, how could ANYONE who lived with/that close to the Corvette lifestyle not know what a Corvette was?
EDIT: same things go for the Fiat/Ferrari story. Sorry.

This is a myth with no basis in fact.

Larry
code5coupe

 

About 4 years back I bought an 86 Grand Prix from a friend. It was his elderly mother's car that she had bought new and had always been garaged. Low mile, clean car, but it had a terrible odor in it. His mother hauled her household gargage to the dump herself in the car and some chicken bones and other food scraps had fallen down in the area in the trunk behind the wheel wells. Also the basement garage where the car was parked had a terrible mold odor and that smell was in the car also.

I cleaned that car like a maniac. Took out the seats and cleaned them with a carpet/upholstry machine, did the carpet, door panels a couple itmes and replaced the headliner. I washed the trunk out with amonia. I sprayed the interior with deodorizers and left a pan of amonia in the car for days trying to get rid of that odor. After about 6 months of this and airing the car out during the day the odor was almost gone except on a very hot, humid day and you could smell a very faint odor. Had I threw the interior away and installed new that probably would have taken care of the problem right away.