In a major setback to festivities surrounding the unearthing of a 1957 Plymouth Belvedere that had been buried in a time capsule in Tulsa, Okla., in 1957, a preliminary opening of the concrete vault revealed the car in several feet of water, according to the Associated Press and reported by CBS.

Hundreds of curious onlookers gathered to learn the secrets of a gold and white Plymouth Belvedere buried half a century ago under this city's courthouse lawn, according to the AP.

The 1957 two-door hardtop - buried to celebrate Oklahoma's 50 years of statehood - was encased in a 12-by-20-foot concrete vault, supposedly tough enough to withstand a nuclear attack.

Event officials already had to pump out several feet of water from the crypt that held the Belvedere for a half-century. But the condition of the car, wrapped in three layers of mud-caked protective material, remains a mystery.