[PICS] 1954 “Entombed” Corvette Now on Display at the National Corvette Museum

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[PICS] 1954

Photo Credits: Jeff Wagner


Richard Sampson, a grocery store owner in Brunswick, Maine, purchased a new 1954 Corvette and enjoyed driving the two-seat convertible for about five years. However, in 1959, Mr. Sampson found out that his wife no longer enjoyed riding in it. After finding this shocking information out from his wife and being disappointed himself, he decided that he would no longer drive the Polo White roadster.

Mr. Sampson was in the process of building a new building for his grocery store chain and chose to entomb the Corvette behind a brick wall inside the store with a square porthole for viewing. He also went to the extent of putting a statement in his will that the Corvette was not to be removed until the year 2000. However, before his death in 1969, he removed that clause from his will.

1954 'Entombed' Corvette Now on Display at the National Corvette Museum


A new owner purchased the store in 1982 and wanted the 1954 Corvette removed from its tomb. In 1986, Mr. Sampson’s daughter took the Corvette home with her, literally. She kept it in her living room for the next 10 years in Daytona Beach, Florida.

The 1954 Entombed Corvette has had multiple owners since then and now has been donated to the National Corvette Museum where it has a permanent display complete with brick walls and a porthole to view it from. Granted, the NCM has left one wall incomplete so that visitors can view the entire Corvette.

[PICS] 1954


[PICS] 1954


[PICS] 1954


[PICS] 1954


[PICS] 1954


[PICS] 1954


[PICS] 1954


[PICS] 1954


Related:
Anonymously Donated 1954 ‘Entombed’ Corvette Joins the National Corvette Museum’s Collection
Barrett-Jackson to Offer the 1954 ‘Entombed’ Corvette at its January Auction
Entombed 1954 Corvette to be Auctioned at Mecum Kissimmee

 



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9 COMMENTS

  1. All good comments… and spot-on, as well.
    It IS an interesting story, and clearly in the running for the “single weirdest Corvette story of all time”. What an odd compulsion to emtomb the fun little car because “his wife no longer enjoyed riding in it”…
    Apparently, he was torn between his own “disappointment” (in driving the little white Corvette?) and his reluctance to completely part ways with it ~ and thus he walled it up in his new store building…
    ‘Perhaps from the terms of his will, he had a sense of what it might be worth decades later…
    But it’s still right up there with oddball stories of the fates of early Corvettes.

  2. It has come to my attention the entire Sampson family had mental issues as after the Corvette was walled up Mrs. Sampson would only travel to her appointments in the grocery store’s delivery van holding a can of corn. The adorable classic founds it’s way into the daughter’s living room because after getting her driver license Mrs. Sampson insisted she could only sit behind the wheel of the delivery van and never actually drive it. As the saying goes “Corvette, it’s the people.”

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