Bay Curious: What's the Story Behind The Car Wreck on Mount Tamalpais?
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- Опубликовано: 25 авг 2024
- Kermit Robbins has been hiking past an old car wreck on a Mount Tamalpais trail for years. He wants to know, how did the car get here, and when?
That guy is correct. Kids pushing an old car down a hill to its doom has been a long standing bay area tradition. Not gonna specify how it got there, but someone may or may not find a 1989 Ford Festiva in several years........
Lol
would that happen to be up on hwy9 near skyline?
@@roywhiteo5 :)
There is a video online of a couple of rock crawler type trucks stuck down in a rock ravin, too deep to recover.
Kids suck. Kids ruin everything
Well, I am from that era, and I had a very good friend, Bill W. (RIP) from Belvedere, who told me back then that, in the late 60's, that was exactly what had happened. He had an old car he wanted to get rid of and one night after dark, he and a few buddies went up Mt Tam, had a beer party, and then pushed his car over the hill, watched it roll down the hill and crash. A bit buzzed, they all laughed their way home. But in my friend's story, about 2 weeks later, a CHP appeared at this door and asked him if it was his car. He admitted to it and was given a citation costing a few hundred dollars. Apparently, as was done then, he had left his DMV Registration strapped under plastic on the shaft of the car's steering wheel! We never went up there, but maybe this is the same car.
My dads buddies and him would so the same to old abandoned cars in the mountains of Santa cruz (never caught though). One of his buddies ended up becoming a cop lol.
@@austinsuper4291 isn't that the way life happens!!!
@@austinsuper4291
I know where there's stuff like this in the Santa Cruz areas
that sounds like a fun night!
@@xmo552 yuump lol mount Madonna (Hecker pass) that goes from Gilroy to Watsonville
I was going to say it was a 41 Pontiac! Knew it from the center grill peice. Called it before the guy showed it!
Was thinking a 42 fleetline
I could tell you everything about modern cars and dirtbikes, but before the 90s, not at all
respect😳
..its a 2021 Tesla
@@chrisgoffe5048 😂😂😂
That beer can has a pop top. Those weren't around in the '40s or '50s. There's a clue for you.
That's true! I didn't realize that when watching it. Pull tab cans were invented in 1963 and in widespread use only a couple of years later. And in the early 1970s, they were superseded by the nonremovable top cans we have now. So unless the can was placed there post wreck, the car must have been wrecked in the mid to late 60s or early 70s, right?
@@jonathanree4524 That would seem to be a reasonable hypothesis.
Yeah because it would be impossible for a passerby to have left it there....
That could have easily been left behind by another hiker. I wonder if the disintegration is able to help them!
@mdo686 Then, they'll never find it.🙃
There are old cars like this all over Mount Diablo as well and Morgan territory. Somebody simply pushed it off the road when they were done with it. Was pretty common back in the day.
My thought as well. Used to go hiking in Topanga Canyon in Southern California in the late 1970s and just about every drop-off by the road held an old rusted car along with ancient washing machines and refrigerators. Quick and easy way to get rid of something you don't want anymore.
yep here in the east bay where i hike there's an old car probably from the '50s rusted at the bottom of a hill.
Where in Morgan? I hike there all the time. Would love to see something new there
Yeah i found a t bucket at mt diablo..found out it came from onyx
I don't know if it's still there, but there used to be an old car at the bottom of a ravine near where Black Diamond Trail forks with the Cumberland Trail. Rolling old cars down cliffs and hills to get rid of them was a fairly common method of disposal back in the day.
It would be rare for it to have 138k miles. Back then engines needed an overhaul around 100k.
Many autos of that period were driven well over 100,000 miles, especially as new cars were not available from 1942 through 1945 and were difficult to obtain for a few years afterward.
They were used 'for the duration' and then some.
A 1941 car might not have been driven much during the war due to gas rationing. We might be able to speculate that this isn't a doctor's car or someone in war production - they would've had a higher rationing status and there'd be more miles on the odometer.
@@WillN2Go1 Much speculation.
@@-oiiio-3993 Both gas and rubber tires were heavily rationed during the war, doubt anyone did much excess driving then as it was highly discouraged.
@@eastbaykidd8574 I am well aware of wartime rationing and the OPA.
And the funny this is, I could have figured out everything they managed to find in this video in 10 minutes on reddit.
Being disgruntled, the Chauffeur after loosing his job, was told to just park the car anywhere and walk home. The former Chauffeur said, "Okay".
Always wondered what the story was behind that car!
...also, nice use of music from the game Kerbal Space Program.
*Is there enough of the firewall for a build plate?* The steering column is consistent with a 1940's-50's build, with the shifter for a presumed three-speed externally mounted. An expert Time 2:35 has it preliminarily identified as a 1941 Pontiac with an inline eight. General Motors went with an early version of the A-arm front suspension in the 1930's, with kingpin-type steering knuckles consistent with this wreck; balljoints weren't used until the 1950's.
But did they use a sway bar in 1941? It's my understanding that they weren't common on pre-war American cars.
Part of the bodywork has a large GM stamped into the metal, so it was a General Motors product.
they did show a piece of metal with "GM" stamped on it
@@MrGeoBoyd My 37 Buick had a sway bar, with independent front suspension.
My dad has some good storiesw about pushing old junkers off cliffs with his friends, it was actually
quite a trend back in the day
I lived up in the hills by Santa Cruz when I was a kid and in the middle of the woods there was a cliff, and next to this cliff was a huge tree which was somehow holding an ancient car which had obviously been driven off the cliff and was also full of bullet holes. Nobody I asked ever knew anything about it and we eventually moved away, but for 33 years that car has haunted me.
you should go back and find it
Find it, retrieve it and restore it to it's former glory! That would make a great story.
I just want to add in case anyone is curious that there’s another wrecked car on a trail in the Berkeley Hills, same deal where I have walked by it so many times and just wondered why it was there. The car seems to be from the same time period as this car, with just as much damage and mystery surrounding it
Add to that what appears to be an Austin-Healey 3000 on Highway 9 above Saratoga.
are you referring to the upside down vw bug in the creek on wildcat canyon trail in tilden park near the nook picnic area ,?
@@kristenmariposa6223 I believe so! Is it right next to the creek that leads to the lake Anza? I’m certain that’s Wildcat creek!
@@kristenmariposa6223 I went back to that trail yesterday and took pictures of the car!! Here’s the link for anyone interested!! twitter.com/jacksonisokay/status/1367742292262449154?s=21
There is a truck somewhere up there half buried in the dirt as well right along the trail. I came across it hiking years ago.
There's lots of cars driven off hills and driven into lakes. Teens having fun.
Reminds me of the 5 or so crashed cars I've seen hiking in the woods by Skyline Blvd (CA 35). The oldest I've seen is a 1940s Chrysler and the newest a 2010-ish Ford Explorer. The latter one was involved in a fatal crash that made local news. They tend to leave the cars in place after wrecks because it would be too hard to pull out of the forest.
you mind sharing the locations of them, i only know of the rusted vw bug on john nicholas
Check out metcalf canyon. Tons of old cars
Youngster would get old car and trucks, and drive them in the woods........Some times they even use old cars as wood haulers. We find them in the woods of New England
I've also seen mangled up car wreckage used for erosion control in creeks in the mountains.
You can find hundreds of cars just left in the woods in West Virginia
Hopefully something good happens to those cars
Check the date on the tires for a time frame for when roughly it was last driven
My grandfather used to talk about chicken races on mt. Tam. Might have something to do with it, he used to say all he ever saw go over the side was two cars.
One old General tire still on her...love automobile archaeology!
oooops Atlas tire
I could identify that this was a Pontiac when I saw the indented strips on the hood, which was a distinctive Pontiac motif. And I also was sure this had been pushed off the road at night intentionally when it was said that there were no newspaper stories of a crash in this location.
I would love to see the engine restored. Being on its side, means the oil is in the cylinder thus not rusted and the intake is pointing down so water is not going in.
An "A" frame suspension and coil springs seem to be evident, so it might have been an upgraded and hot-rodded "1941 Pontiac".
The remaining tire may give clue as to when. Tire maker & style would have been produced up to a certain date. Today there are manufacture dates when the tire was made on the sidewall.
Don't think any dates were on tires back then.
One of the senior class pranks at Monta vista involved the students pushing a car in the pool. So I here. So pushing a vehicle and abandonning it seems plausible.
Thanks for very little
The mechanic needs his own show
heard this last night on the radio, i was laughing pretty hard "ya go daddy-o"
lololol
There would have been a vin on the jam of that old Poncho, there would likely have been a data plate in the engine compartment as well
The vin wouldn't do anything on a car that old. My 1980 volvos vin can't be used at all
Bay area "Carcheology".
Along the Carquinez Scenic Dr in Martinez, you'll see an old wreck down the hill. With my knowledge of cars and pictures, I found it to be a 1962 Chevrolet Bel Air.
I watch that whole thing and you don't even know the answer!!!!
You're a legend, you saved me from watching it too. This is why I scroll comments before I watch these things.
There is a old car with the same old headlights(that bubble mostly outside the frame look) but i think it was a pickup at my parents house in the the Santa Cruz mountains just outside of Silicon valley. The car was found there before the private 1 mile road to the house was built in the late 70s, from the public road which would have existed in the 40s. Which means the car was just driven down the ridgeline most likely just crashing through the shrub before tumbling down a steeper part of the hillside a bit. I was also told that kids in the 50s would steal cars and drive them off cliffs for fun. Sounded wild to me, but I have done that in video games before and they didn't have those so who knows. The car ended up packed with sticks by woodrats and we never bothered looking through it to see if it was a crime scene though so RIP if so but no point disturbing it now.
great story - thanks for the research!
Usually a wreck like that is a stolen car pushed over the edge. (You wouldn't push your own worn out car because there's a good chance it'll come back on you and you'll be charged for winching it out.) These are all over the U.S. if it was just off a road in a less spectacular spot it could've just been a road accident. Monte Cristo hiking trail in the San Gabriels has a few wrecks at the bottom like this. It's right off a main road. In other canyons in the San Gabriels are Model T chassies that were caught up in the 1932 flood. Model T's were made with Vanadium steel so their wrecks won't rust out as quickly as other cars. Higher up in some mountains and blind canyons you'll find aircraft wreckage. In Michigan we just to see cars in lakes. These were used for ice fishing when the ice wasn't quite thick enough. Or they're stolen cars parked on the ice late in the season.
that ksp music though
A blatant rip off! Squad should DMCA KQED ASAGDP OMGWTFBBQ!
1953 and earlier, the engine serial number was used for the VIN
I lived for a time, 1967, on Pine Hill Rd, kinda the outskirts of Milk Valley then. Couple friends of mine, and myself, took a hike up some trails one day, from where we lived and came across that car, wrecked at that spot. We didn't know what or why it was there just thought it was pretty cool that we made it this far up n came across a wrecked car. I was 14 then, n have told the tale many times over, of following unknown dirt trails, up a steep hillside, to see the view and discover a old wrecked car.
When I was a kid there were some mangled car bodies, engines, axles, etc at the bottom of the cliff by the whirlpool down river from Niagra Falls. Those cars hit hard!
Interesting story!!! Thanks..
Interesting. Some 10 years ago this Limey toured the Rockies and Black Hills, and was heart broken by the number of genuinely classic 1920's cars and trucks just dumped and rotting away in the roadside fields. Mount Tam, I know better for the famous railroad that used to go up the mountain to the summit - Shay engines pushed the cars up the hill, and Ol' Man Gravity brought them back down again.
Way back in the day they used junked cars for guardrails in the mountains in colorado
They used old (1950s) cars to shore up the side of the creek near our house in Concord Ca.
I found the rusted out wrecks of THREE Simca 1000's (red, white, and light blue) near the start of the VASA trail in Traverse City Michigan. No idea how they got out there, either.
That is so weird. If I recall Simcas weren't sold here through dealers so someone went through the trouble to import it and then just give up
That was so cool. Excellent job.
Wrong...it was my grandpa's car. My uncle wrecked it there when he was a teenager.
Care to elaborate?
Yeah, what he said☝️
Proof please.
@@TheTonialadd can't prove it. Uncle is dead, all the family elders are dead but that was his claim.
Mt. Tam... such a magical place.
You could check the manufacturer date on the tire to let you know the last time it got new tires
I remember seeing this rusted car hulk on a hike in the early 1970s. 1941 Pontiac makes sense, I doubt it had 138,000 miles as cars back then generally didn't last that long.
So mechanically not so durable, such that the body didn't have time to rust out. Now it's the reverse.
They would last longer than that if you took care of them.
3:45 it might have crashed somewhere in the 60’s because that can has the 60’s style can
Maybe that just means that people have been visiting the wreck since the 60s?
There’s another car wreck in Juaqin mIller park in Oakland. It’s off a trail close to the view point.
At water dog park in Belmont there are three cars like this. The funny thing is, the trees have grown up since the cars were apparently pushed from the ridges.There's no way they could get to where they are now!
It's a 41 pontiac torped coupe I looked at the pictures and I matched the fender or what's left of it and what I saw it was a luxury car and back then very expensive to own
Amazing Fact! There is the remains of a Grumman Hellcat WWII fighter plane crashed not too far from Rock Springs. Found it on an acid trip in 68'. Never could find it again. Go due North East from the parking lot. Lemme know whatcha find.
Rock Springs Wyoming?
The Ksp music kinda caught me off guard😂
Did tires have date codes back then?
Great investigation! Now there's more than 10 cars in Trona wildrose road, Slate Range Crossing to identify and get the story behind all of them!
In Marin in San Geronimo Valley people used to abandon wrecked and worthless cars in the woods in the 70s. When I lived there there you could stumble across them all overgrown on hikes.
What fantastic historians the park services have... I could tell it was a GM with the stamp of GM on it LOL... you take a few pics of it and a car guy CLEARLY figured it out in less than an hour
DMV? Local sheriff?
Anything on the slope above the wreck?
Human remains?
Funeral notices?
Drunk driver?
Somebody driving home late one night, fell asleep and didn't make the turn.
Flatbed truck, carrying the old car, took the turn too fast and the car rolled off.
I've always wondered about the wrecks at the bottoms of the cliffs along Coast Highway One.
I would have never thought it to be a car from the 1940s!
I thought it was a hatchback from like the 70s until the specific details were mentioned
I’d like to find out about the old jet plane that used to be in a park on 19th st in SF.
@Andrew M ...for real though.. I always wondered the same thing 🤔
I played on that thing as a kid in to 70s.
I heard it was hauled off. Lead paint.
Nicely done as the logical inclusion of people that actually know a lot about early autos.
"Iron American Dream" on RUclips
Traditionally you smoke a doobie right there. Roll up a fatty and burn it down. Mount Tam is so beautiful.
When land was cleared for farming the rocks were put into walls. Old walls all over the Ozarks. Hard pan was dug out of the ground in the San Joaquin Vally made into walls. The last walls were destroyed around 40 years ago, all now gone.
In Newfoundland along the old rail road tracks of Princeton you’ll find cars abandoned in the bushes and even stuck in odd places just like this. Car is. It’s usually done when the cars are done for.
Omg you guys don’t know how the car got there?? I thought everyone knew that.. sheesh
Do the tires have a manufacturing date code stamped on them?
Any updates?
Is it fixable?
What is the trail to get there?
Taking the Matt Davis Trail from Pantoll Ranger Station to the Coastal Trail... Or from Willow Camp Fire Road (which starts off West Ridgecrest Blvd and head towards Coastal Trail toward Matt Davis Trail... In any event maybe about 3/4 mile or less from either direction.
There’s one in Pleasanton! By the Pleasanton Preserve
There’s also a CRV flipped over at the bottom of a cliff on devils slide trail in Pacifica.
We used to take our winter beaters to the gravel pits in the spring, demo derby or just drive to destruction. I once had a pinto wagon, it was a tough car, drove it to the pits to wreck and leave it there, ended up driving it home again after as it wouldn’t die, finally on the third trip to the pits and after loosing all the coolant the engine seized. Pushed it into a waterhole, it floated out to the middle and sunk, turned out to be really deep!
Good chance it’s still down there.
I cringe at some of the cars that wrecked there, but they were just old cars at the time.
Atlas Grip Safe tires are a clue, too.
It was a Tokyo drift hill bully style from the 50's.
saw that wreck.. also saw couple more wrecks on my recent hikes..
My uncle pushed a car off a cliff with his friends when he was a teenager, it wasn't uncommon. the car he pushed was a 1971 beetle though
A: Kids blowing off some steam or B: Insurance fraud
There should be some sort of serial number stamped somewhere. I have a 1946 Dodge. Back then, the VIN was basically the serial number. Usually found stamped on a plate on the driver side right in front of the door. Best thing is to ask a pontiac expert out serial number locations.
its 38k miles. many odometers at the time did not have a place for a 6th digit to be in the 100k+ milage range. engines were not set for that much wear and tear. also many people did not drive as long distance or as much as we modernly do.
Yeah, but the 1941 model year cars were the last produced before the US entered into WWII. Immediately after Pearl Harbor, auto manufacturing was put on hold for the duration and the auto plants refitted to produce planes and tanks. America wouldn't produce cars again until the late 40s. If you owned a '41 anything, chances were you ended up owning it much longer than you had planned and the likelihood of rolling over the odometer was higher. Of course, that was countered by wartime gas rationing which would tend to reduce the number of miles driven.
Many autos of that period were driven well over 100,000 miles, especially as new cars were not available from 1942 through 1945 and were difficult to obtain for a few years afterward.
A 41 Poncho is a slick car. I’d love to grab that straight 8, & anything else salvageable. So long as the block isn’t cracked, it’s possible it (the engine) could be saved!
*Put it in your Tesla!*
Odd, there's one like that near atherton avenue in the walking paths...
I noticed you didn't even consider aliens... 😕
You check the VIN...not the VIN number
ATM Machine.
@@joediver7669 Department of redundancy department.
La Brea Tar Pits.
interesting how one tyre is still firmly on the wheel
Several of these in the creek coming out of water dog lake. I've also heard it was kids pushing them down hills
3:52
Yeah but someone was supposed to be in the car in the movie where that scenes from
I doubt it has over 100k miles, back then cars didn’t last as long as today. A lot of people mistake rigidity and materials for reliability.
“Yo daddyo!” ~kids from the fifties 😂
I saw something on the newspaper that said “the torpedo” so it drove off at high speed
Did the tires not have date codes back then? That would give a good timeline of when it happened.
cool, now if i ever get a 41' pontiac i know where to get free A arms and a drive train
Lmao it's probably just one giant block of rust at this point
@@jacobfleming565 nothing a little bit of WD-40 and some torqe cant take off, plus rust wash dose wonders
Those cars had a huge turning radius. You needed lots of space to turn around.
Inline 8? Am I allowed to restore that car?
Stolen car, joyriding kids disposing said car at the end of the night.
What's the story behind the car; we don't know. Thanks for watching
Why does a tire that has been out side in the elements for about 40-50 years still look new?
if it was pushed down the hill or rolled down, using a metal detector and walking from top to bottom might turn up more clues
Bay Curious is also a term for VW split window bus guys that want to experiment with the later and less desirable post 1967 Bay window vans.
A mill valley police chief drove off a cliff and died somewhere around there. Never mind, they didn't die and it was William Walsh in 1911.
One burning question remains: Why hasn't the old wreck been hauled off to a junkyard by now?
Why? Who would pay the ridiculous price to recover the car that far down a mountainside. And then not get anything back when it is scrapped.
That would be really dangerous trying to winch all the way up the mountain.
Police officer: "we don't know what kind of vehicle it is exactly"
Me (a car guy): "oh that's a 1940s Pontiac"
I think it could be a 1958 Plymouth fury just a guess though.
When I was kid in the late 60's I remember seeing a couple of old wrecks that were down ravines.
I think they didn't have the technology or the will to move them like they do now.