Excavator unearths Jeep buried for 40 years in sand dune

After 40 years, a rusty Jeep has been extricated from from its sandy burial spot in Massachusetts.

Friday's operation involved a contractor in an excavator who found the Jeep Wagoneer in a wooden garage that has been buried under a a massive sand dune on Cape Cod’s shoreline since the 1970s.

"I don't think he envisioned that it would come out in pieces," Kay Musnuff, the wife of the Jeep’s owner told the Cape Cod Times.

John Musnuff took the hubcaps off with a crowbar to keep as a memento.

“There’s not much else to keep,” he told the paper.

Munsnuff says the family was unable to remove the Jeep or dismantle the now-collapsed garage all these years because of environmental regulations around the dunes, which also have swallowed up parts of a nearby town beach parking lot.

Workers loaded the pile of metal onto a truck to be taken away, presumably a dump, Fox 25 Boston reports.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.