It’s been a long, special process for the restoration of the one-millionth Corvette ever produced. The car, a 1992 C4 Corvette convertible, was unexpectedly swallowed in the massive sinkhole at the National Corvette Museum. General Motors and Chevrolet knew the significance of the Corvette could not be overlooked, and vowed to restore it.
Today, the company has announced the vehicle’s completion, as it was unveiled at the National Corvette Museum, where it will return to the museum’s completed Skydome.
“We felt it was important to restore this extremely significant car in Corvette’s long, storied history,” said Mark Reuss, General Motors executive vice president, Global Product Development, Purchasing and Supply Chain. “When we disassembled it, we found that each employee involved in building it had signed a part of the car, which was fantastic and moving to see. It brought the history to life, and reinforced the importance of the project.”
What made the restoration a challenge was the discovery of autographs by the assembly team on nearly every panel and component of the 1992 C4 Corvette. Upon further inspection, the restoration team at General Motors’ Technical Center decided to go through great lengths to ensure each signature would be saved.
This included the reconditioning of every single original body panel besides two signed components. But, GM has scanned those two panels, and transferred the original autographs to the new parts, which were taken from a time-period correct C4 Corvette to ensure authenticity. Of it all, one signature could not be saved, as the damage would not let the scanner compute the writing.
But, Chevrolet tracked down Bowling Green employee, Angela Lamb, and had a new signature put into place to match the original. This one-millionth Corvette was shown the utmost care in its restoration.
Every detail down to the one-off “1,000,000th Corvette” embroidery on the headrests was reconditioned, saving as much authenticity as possible, with no replacements.
The 1992 C4 Corvette will permanently be on display at the NCM once again, joining the 2009 Corvette ZR1 as fully restored.
We can only tip our hats to GM. A project some may have seen as silly, but others, a historical milestone for one of America’s great sports cars.
Comments
Most impressive on the restoration here. To recondition these parts and not lose the names is a master piece.
I am just sad they will not treat the PPG car the same way.