Mythbusters Debacle. Air Date 12/5/03

[Joe C.]

Did anybody happen to watch a horrible show on The Discovery Channel last night? Two morons actually murdered a perfectly nice 1986 Corvette. The show is called "Mythbusters". What these two idiots did, was to sacrifice a very nice '86, by placing 2 dead pigs inside of it. They then sealed every seam with duct tape, and let it remain in a sealed storage box for two months. They periodically showed pictures of the maggots that were dripping from within. It made me sick.

The whole point of this madness, was to determine if the stench of death could be washed out of the car. Anybody with a 1/2 brain would realize that the putrid stench will permeate all rubber and plastic parts of the car. Needless to say, the car is now totaled, despite the fact that the entire interior was removed.

Why the h..l didn't they use an old LeBaron, or such for this madness.

Here is a link that anyone may use, to voice your opinion:

http://extweb.discovery.com/viewerrelations

Joe

[Michael W.]

Maybe somebody should

invent a judging class for cars like this.

Any takers?

[Dave Suesz]

Discovery used to be informative...

I sent them this:

Your narrator said Corvette enthusiasts would be upset at what was done- Duh! What a moronic waste of a perfectly good car! Does the smell of rotting flesh permeate plastic? Anybody could answer that one even if they slept through high school chemistry class. Do people react negatively to the smell of dead flesh? Is this REALLY the most intellectual stuff your program director could come up with? He (she) should go to work for MTV, where a room-temperature IQ is the norm.

[Brian McHale]

Re: Mythbusters Debacle. Air Date 12/5/03

Are you sure it was pigs? It may have been one of their wives and her mother.

[Roger Legge]

Re: Mythbusters Debacle. Air Date 12/5/03

The myth, or urban legend, is the old story of somebody buying a like-new Corvette for a couple hundred dollars because of a smell in the car. I was born/raised in northern Ohio and the version I heard as a teen was that someone had slid off a snowy road, was stuck/buried in snow, died and was not found until after the spring thaw. The Vette was sold for almost nothing because, supposedly, the smell could not be removed from the car.

Roger
#36316

[Duke W.]

Re: Mythbusters Debacle. Air Date 12/5/03

I doubt if any of the organic molecules that cause the odor will be permanently "absorbed" into the vinyl and plastic. I know of several people who bought used cars that had been owned by smokers. Even if they didn't have the interior completely shampooed, the odor eventually went away.

The odor from a decomposing animal or human body would be worse than smoke for sure, but a throough interior shampoo and maybe new carpets, let it air dry for a few days, and the odor will likely be gone.

Duke

[Duke W.]

P.S.

That old wives' tale about the nearly new Corvette for sale cheap because a guy died in it and they can't get the smell out has been around for a lot longer than Corvettes. When I first heard the story at about age 14, circa 1961, the nearly new Corvette was supposedly located on Bainbridge Island, across Puget Sound from Seattle where the Williams family resided.

When I told my dad about this "find" he just laughed and said when he first heard such a story it was a Stutz Bearcat!

Duke

[Dave Suesz]

For what it's worth...

I worked for a guy in 1972 who had purchased an almost new ordinary car, not some rare collector car, about 10 years earlier. A guy had died in his garage, in the the car. It smelled. My boss bought it cheap, not dirt cheap because the mechanicals, like the rest, were almost new. He filled the car with hay (not straw- he was insistent on this) and parked it for a month. Drove it for years after that.

[Tracy C.]

[Dennis C.]

[Dick W.]

[Clare Carpenter]

Re: For what it's worth...

This is nothing new. People die in cars on occasion from natural causes, suicide and sometimes due to crime. Often they're not discovered until after someone notices the smell and sees fuids running out the door or truck. Yechhhh! There are trauma scene cleaning companies that employ special cleaning methods but I wouldn't want to own such a car, no matter how cheap. There was a murder not too long ago in a newly built Walmart parking lot not far from me. The guy was found shot dead in a late model Corvette the following morning. Although no decompostion had occured, blood spatter and pieces of flesh made a mess I'm sure. Someone will be driving that car someday and may have no idea of it's history.