Here at Hot Cars we cover almost every imaginable aspect of modern car culture. In fact, it’s not just cars we deal in. If it’s a vehicle of any sort we’ve probably written an article about it. Anyone who has ever read one of my articles about wooden motorcycles and self-made pickup trucks (working ones, mind you) has figured out that we’ll cover just about anything if it has an engine and a story. But when my editor first proposed the idea of a list about cars and motorcycles found underwater I thought he might have lost it. Sure, everyone reads in the local paper every now and then about someone going off a bridge or driving into a lake when their GPS failed them. But I didn’t think there was much more than stuff like that out there. Little did I know…

It turns out there are literally thousands and thousands of vehicles sunk in the world’s oceans, lakes, rivers, and ponds, oftentimes for reasons far beyond what one would normally think. There are dozens of reasons cars “go under” ranging from the incredible (artificial coral reefs, anyone?) to the ridiculous (you’ll have to wait to find out what I mean by that). There are so many cars, planes, trains (yes, trains), motorcycles and more bubbling beneath the surface of our waterways that it was hard to choose. But I think I’ve got a pretty good batch for you.

Here are 20 vehicles that will live forever. Underwater, that is.

20 Going Old School

via thedrive

Here’s a real old school car that somehow found its way to the bottom of the ocean. This is one of the great mysteries of so many of the entries on this list- how did that car get there?

Based upon the scuba divers who took this picture, this car has got to be in somewhat deep water- it wasn’t just covered up by some minor flooding.

Was it on some sort of massive seagoing transport vessel that lost some of its inventory in a storm? Is it even in the ocean? For all that we know it could be in an old quarry pond, a victim of some terrible driving decision.

19 British Jeeps

via dailymail

And then there are the vehicles found underwater where there is absolutely no mystery involved. That’s the case here, as we gaze at a British graveyard of Jeeps from WWII. The answer to this one is pretty simple and I bet you already know it. That’s right, these jeeps were on an army transport ship hauling supplies, including vehicles, when it was and by  Germany's forces. This particular underwater shot is so well known that we even know the ship that was carrying these jeeps. It was the SS Thistlegorm of the British merchant marine and it was sunk in 1941 en route to Alexandria, Egypt.

18 Real Off-roading

via pinterest

Back we go to the mysterious ones in our collection, this time taking a look at a vehicle that definitely looks like it’s in the ocean. Actually, although it’s pretty hard to tell with all of the seaweed and fish life around it, this one looks like it might be some sort of old model Toyota Land Rover or a Range Rover of some sort. Maybe. That would be pretty cool if it was. Maybe this one was headed across the seas to take place in some kind 0f awesome desert endurance race (hey, a writer can dream, right?) when it suddenly found itself off-roading under the worst possible conditions.

17 Motorcycle Mania

via ninjajournalist

Yes, I told you we were going to be peering into the murky depths and coming up for air with glimpses of all sorts of vehicles and I promise I wasn’t lying. Here we have a motorcycle that appears to be in the hold of a sunken ship out there under the ocean blue somewhere.

There are always more questions than answers in these situations.

Was this part of a Harley-Davidson attempt to spearhead foreign interest in their bike? Is it another casualty of war? We just don’t know. What we do know is that this motorcycle has morphed into its own miniature coral reef.

16 Ice Yacht

via trending

You can find submerged vehicles all over the world and, of course, you’re going to find more ships than anything else. It stands to reason as ships ply their trade on the water and cars, motorcycles, and planes don’t. But I had to include this sunken treasure simply because it’s so wild. This is a yacht that was being used by its wealthy owner for a documentary in the Antarctic when it quite literally froze up. That’s right. According to Business Insider “Joao Lara Mesquita, journalist, and owner of the 76-foot yacht was producing a documentary with four crew members when his boat sank off the coast of Antarctica.” Everyone but the yacht was rescued. The yacht is now the world’s largest ice cube.

15 Deep Muscle

via ctsmob

But hark; is this a muscle car I see before me? I’m a big fan of muscle cars, both classic and modern, as anyone who reads my stuff knows. But I’ve got to admit I’m not a huge fan of this particular car. I can’t really tell what make and model this thing is (hey, it’s underwater and covered with fish, cut me a break) and I don’t even know for sure that it is a muscle car but it sure has that vibe to it I think. Maybe it’s all that red paint still on there. Give it a few more years and nobody will have even a guess as to its origins, as it becomes another addition to the reef.

14 Truckin’ Along

via thedrive

There’s an old song by an old band called “Truckin’” that includes this line: “Sometimes the light’s all shining on me, other times I can barely see, lately it occurs to me, what a long, strange trip it’s been.” First of all, if you don’t know the name of the band that sang this song that’s OK- not many people do anymore. Second of all, I think it suits this underwater derelict truck to a T. This thing has definitely had a long, strange trip to end up in the bottom of the ocean and there ain’t no light shining on it anymore. Truckin’ indeed!

13 Royal Wreck

via divemagazine

Here we have another one of those pre-planned, not at all mysterious or accidental sunken vehicles we are all enjoying seeing so much. But this time no one is trying to shore up a seawall or create an artificial reef for marine wildlife.

Nope, what we have here is a blatant attempt to lure tourists.

This is a giant old Hercules C-130 transport plane that was purposely sunk as part of a project by Jordan’s King Abdullah II at a tourist "dive site” along with some other vehicles. Scuba tourism is a thing and the country of Jordan wants in on it apparently.

12 Cargo Plane Carries Water

via pinterest

We continue our trip into the murky depths with another vehicle from the soaring skies. This time, unlike our last entry, the sinking was not done on purpose. Actually, I should probably amend that statement. The sinking was done on purpose but it was a nefarious one. This is an cargo transport plane shot down by planes during WWII. Honestly, I wonder how many downed planes and sunken ships dot the world’s oceans from that war. My guess is that the number probably runs into the tens of thousands. It’s pretty sad when you think about it.

11 Chopper Down

via pinterest

Well for our last entry in a triumvirate of almost unidentified flying objects (yeah, I know, that was a little cheesy, sorry), we have what appears to be your plain old garden variety helicopter. This one definitely doesn’t look like some military relic from a 20th century conflict.

It looks more like something your local big city’s traffic reporter used to fly around in.

Or a chopper that could be rented to visit the Grand Canyon or see the fall foliage in New England. I’ve got no information on this one- it’s just another weird vehicle found underwater. I will say, with the total absence of an engine, control panel, or even seats that it seems like someone stripped this one down before dumping it. Hmm…

10 Underwater Chop Shop?

via thedrive

Speaking of completely stripping down a machine for all usable parts before relegating it to the deep, I wonder what we have here? Just a couple of SUVs missing their engine blocks and just about anything else that could have been of value on the salvage market. So, obviously, someone stripped them before dumping them. Is this a thing? I guess what I’m asking is- how easy is this to do? Wouldn’t it be a lot easier to drive them off into the woods somewhere? The logistics of an enterprise like this, if it is indeed what I think it is, escape me. Talk about complicated.

9 Hurricane Harvey

via townhall

Here’s one where the car isn’t really quite underwater yet but it might as well be. You have probably seen dozens if not hundreds of images just like this in the past few years as various hurricanes have taken their toll upon Houston, the Carolinas, and Florida. It’s almost to the point where there must be just an insane amount of flooded, sunk, and ultimately ruined cars from these extreme forces of nature. It’s really heartbreaking to think about how many families, rich and poor alike, lost their cars to the vagaries of the weather. But also, where do all of these cars go afterward? Someone probably dumps them in the ocean. I’m kidding, I'm kidding.

8 Sad Bus

via pinterest

Talk about sad. I wasn’t sure I even wanted to include this entry on this list. After all, who wants to see a school bus resting underwater? But I dug into this image a little bit and there’s nothing scary or depressing about it.

It’s just another one of those attempts to create artificial reefs for various marine ecosystems to flourish in.

Apparently, there are whole hosts of marine reef-dwelling organisms that thrive on hard surfaces and even larger fauna (read fish) that thrive on eating those smaller organisms. So cars and even buses provide the perfect environment. Who knew?

7 Parking Garage

via pinterest

These cars are obviously from a different generation and not modern at all so I’m going to go out on a limb and say they are yet another example of the destruction caused by WWII. The cars look like they are from that era, even if they don’t look especially military, and how else could one explain the way they ended up at the bottom of the ocean almost perfectly aligned as if parked there on purpose. My working theory is that another transport ship met a slow sinking demise, leaving its cargo perfectly lined up at the bottom of the sea in a cold, briny parking garage.

6 A Mystery

via youtube

There’s a certain amount of mystery attached to this image of a relatively modern looking VW Beetle. First of all, the car looks like it’s in great shape- well, as great shape as a car resting underwater can look- and that’s weird enough in and of itself.

Usually, these underwater cars we see are stripped down, half-destroyed hulks but not this one.

Second, the divers who found it also found a luggage tag in the car with a guy’s name on it. They traced him to a museum where he worked but no one had any idea where he had disappeared to. Oh yeah, there was nobody in the car. Did this guy create an elaborate cover-up and disappear forever? It looks like we won’t ever know.

5 Courtesy Of The NYC Subway

via 6sqft

I think this is one of the coolest images on this entire list. Here we have the interior of a New York City subway car that was transported out of New York City’s harbor and very carefully dropped by crane and winch onto the outer reefs somewhere else. The reason the city did this was, of course, to stimulate reef ecosystems. The whole concept is so crazy to me that I can’t believe it actually works but it’s clearly a thing. But do you want to know what’s even crazier? The city did this with almost 3,000 decommissioned subway cars, up and down the east coast. The photo we are looking at here is from a reef system all the way down in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.

4 Whoops!

via thedrive

This particular photo is a little odd and even scary if you ask me. First of all, it looks like the car in question got into a major fender bender while driving on the ocean floor. Now I know it’s just a trick of the light and the car was most likely jettisoned after it got in an accident but the effect of the picture is rather unsettling. But what’s even more unsettling is how that cloud of seaweed or algae or whatever it is seems to be bearing down on the car like some monster from the deep in a creepy horror movie. I’ll stick with dive sites and artificial reefs, not watery tombs, thank you very much!

3 Love Bug

via pinterest

We finally get to a classic Volkswagen Beetle. Unfortunately said beetle has become an underwater algae breeding machine. This picture is a little bit off-putting as well, what with the driver’s side door leaning open like someone was trying to escape the car and the passenger side door simply lying on the lake’s floor as if it were kicked off. But that didn’t happen for real, it’s just the viewer’s imagination kicking into high gear. This is just another in a long line of random wrecks that divers turn up accidentally all of the time. How they got there is almost always a mystery but at least there were no skeletons with sea worms nesting in their eye sockets to greet the divers.

2 The Slow Descent

via howstuffworks

Here's a car that hasn’t quite made its way all the way under the surface of the water. Yet. That’s because I didn’t want anyone to get too freaked out by what they are going to see in the ensuing entries.

This is a car that has clearly been caught by floodwaters.

It might very well end up completely submerged but eventually, those floodwaters will recede and we will be left with a vehicle that may or may not be recoverable. That won’t be the case for everything else we see on this list. Any vehicle that spends any decent amount of time “down below” isn't going to have a second life.

1 Dutch Bus Becomes Dam

via duikenbeeld

So what do you do if you live in a low-lying country like Holland and you need to shore up your coastline? After all, there’s a reason the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg are called the Low Countries- half of their landmass is basically below sea level. Those populations have got to keep their seawalls in good shape or even the slightest storm off their coastlines might cause massive damage. I guess one way to keep your seawall solid is to sink a city bus down there. Who knew? I'm assuming they dropped off all of their passengers before making the descent.

Sources: 6sqft.com, youtube.com, chron.com, jalopnik.com