Sometime around 1977, a classic Jeep Wagoneer became entombed after a sand dune in Truro, Massachusetts shifted and engulfed a garage. Now, after four decades, the Jeep has been removed from the garage, and holy shit, does it look terrible.
Jeep’s venerable SJ platform brought the world a lot of rough and tumble vehicles like my J10 pickup, but none of them were tough enough to put up much of a fight against gearheads’ arch nemesis, Fe2O3— rust.
And boy, did that rust have an effect on this once-gorgeous old razor-grille Wagoneer. Of course, the extraction method—which consisted of a tractor yanking the Jeep out with a chain by what looks like the axle tube— didn’t seem to have helped much, either:
This is a sad day for Jeep nerds. I myself am weeping on my keyboard, while simultaneously wondering if maybe, somehow, I could give this thing a new lease on life.