When I lived in Fort Walton Beach Florida in the late '80's I had heard about this car. It was located in Perdido Bay, west of Pensacola right before you crossed over the Highway 98 bridge into Alabama. Since it was only about an hour away from me I decided to go check it out.
I headed over to Perdido Bay and sure enough there was the car sitting broadside in plain sight along side the garage only about 20-25 yards from the road. Nobody seemed to be around, so I decided to risk taking a close up peek at the car. There were a number of large live oak trees around the garage and a thick layer of damp leaves and some underbrush in the vicinity of the car which made it easy to sneak up to it for a look. When I got up to the car it was apparent that it had been sitting there a long time. Tires were flat and partially sunk into the ground and rust was popping out everywhere. The property was literally within sight of Perdido Bay so the car got a lot of exposure to the salt air and humidity of being so close to the water and sitting on a bed of damp leaves certainly didn't help it any.
Apparently the guy got tired of people asking him about the car so at some point he dragged it around to the other side of the garage to hide it from view from the street. Here the hedges grew up around and through the car as seen in the picture in the story. When I looked at the car it was '88, maybe '89 and it was a rust bucket then. I can only imagine how much worse it was when they finally pulled it out of the hedges years later. I'm surprised it didn't disintegrate when they dragged it out of there!
I just don't get why people let cars like that just rot away. IIRC the rumor when I looked at it was that the car belonged to his son, who bought it new, and then left for Vietnam where he then died. The father then held onto the car as a reminder of his son and couldn't bear to part with it. After reading the story, apparently that rumor was just that - a rumor and not factual at all. I just don't get it - what's the point of holding on to a car if you are just going to let it rot away?