And all of the kings horses and all of the kings men, and so on and so forth.
Officially, the National Corvette Museum will backtrack on its original decision, and fill the massive sinkhole that emerged in its Skydome, which swallowed eight historic Corvettes earlier this year. Of those eight Corvettes, General Motors, through Chevrolet, will only restore three of them.
The lucky three Chevrolet will restore are the “Blue Devil” 2009 Corvette ZR1 prototype, the 1-millionth Corvette produced which is a white 1992 convertible, and will fund the restoration of the 1962 Corvette, which the National Corvette Museum will oversee. A restoration shop has not yet been determined. The other five Corvettes will remain in the tattered state that they were recovered in, to “preserve their historical significance.” Which could be translated to the fact that they were simply wrecked beyond repair. They will remain on display at the NCM, in a section dedicated to the event.
What’s more, General Motors will provide nearly $250,000 in support to help the NCMÂ recover from the sinkhole, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this weekend. As for why the NCM is filling the sinkhole, it simply came down to money.
“At the June board meeting, the information available at that time indicated a cost of around $500,000 more to keep the hole, but after incorporating additional safety features and vapor barriers for humidity control, the price tag rose to $1 million more than the cost to put the Skydome back how it was,” according to Museum Executive Director Wendell Strode.
Comments
The novelty has worn off and time to fill her in.
I would rather see cars than a gapping hole. I just wonder who will volunteer to put their cars in there now. LOL!
I really hoped a portion of the sink hole would remain. Museums are intended to preserve history. In this case, the preserve part didn’t work out so well for the eight cars involved. But after visiting the museum, to me, the sink hole and the destroyed ‘Vetts were a part of history the NCM had to preserve. That place is full of beautiful, perfect cars that are placed as props to convey a message. The same could be done with a portion of the sinkhole and the three cars that are beyond repair. (That) Bowling Green sinkhole is a unique situation that despite the difficulties and cost to preserve, seems almost an obligation that should be done. They’ve surely made an extra million ~~because of the sinkhole.
I think ” they” will regret filling/covering a page of Corvette history that happened right there on NCM property. I watched all the YouTube videos of retrieval. It did not compare to being there. Future visitors won’t get that experience. That’s too bad.
“Museums are intended to preserve history.”
By that token, the “National Corvette Museum” should be called the “National Corvette Museum and Geological Exhibit”.
If museums are intended to preserve history, then the NCM should’ve be built on the strength of the Corvette’s achievements on and off the track, and not on the basis of a fluke geological event that does nothing to strengthen and embolden the history of the nameplate.
The sinkhole is just a sinkhole that will fade from memory, and that the Corvette is an ever evolving legacy of GM’s performance and technological might. The hole will never worthy of a page in the book of Corvette, nor will be as fondly remembered as much as the C6R vs. DBR9 rivalry.
To preserve the hole and to promote it as an first-class attraction is to say publicly that a hole in the ground deserves equal reverence as America’s premiere sports car.
As the kids go back to school and the crowds die down, the NCM board of directors realize that the attendance spike is withering away to a nub.
I agree with Manoli that the line quoted as “preserve their historical significance” of the 5 wrecked Corvettes is absolute bull. It’s a long winded way of saying “write off”.
I agree completely. The novelty has run it’s course. Fill the hole, get some more cars to display, and get on with actually displaying and preserving historical Vettes. As to the totaled cars; there are some things that are beyond even the goodwill of New GM. Sure they could have literally re-manufactured the cars. but that’s expensive and foolhardy. Destiny has spoken, if the totaled cars are that valuable, let them be displayed in the condition fate ultimately dealt them.
GM could rebuild all these cars if they really wanted too.
The fact is when you come down to it you have to weigh some factors.
#1 what is the historical significance of the car?
#2 what is the cost of repair.
#3 how much damage was done.
#4 Could it be easily replaced?
The bottom line is this. The Mallet while a cool car really was not a historic GM car and a new one could be build by Mallet with the insurance money.
The 40th Anniversary was nothing special and there are many low mileage ones out there that could replace it cheap.
The 1.5 million is an odd number and not really one most companies celebrate.
The other cars while neat shoe cars for the most were forgotten outside the hard core collectors. Like many show cars in the past these will just be written off as they hold no real significance to most people.
The rest were not damaged much and the 1 millionth model is a very significant number so it would be of great historic value later.
The bottom line is anything could be rebuilt or replaced but it comes down to is it really worth it in some cases. With these few cars it was not worth the cost.
Now if it were the original Sting Ray or Manta Ray then we would have seen them rebuilt from the fragments they could save.
The old saying about opinions applies in this situation. Just read an article in Vette magazine that gave the board’s reasons for (keeping) a portion of the sinkhole. “History” was referenced several times. In the end, economics changed their minds. It’s a shame that cost over-ruled the board’s preference to leave some portion of the sinkhole. Hopefully time will prove that filling the sinkhole was the right move all along. I completely agree with not trying to restore some of the damaged cars. When there isn’t a single good part to bolt a new part to, that seems pointless. Leaving them in their current state likely makes them more interesting to most folks. Like the ones that have boosted the NCM’s attendance of late.