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Alright, let’s discuss the elephant in the room: that big ass hole in the floor. Kentucky is known for many things: Horse racing, blue grass, bourbon, and Corvettes just to name a few. But Kentucky is also home to some amazing caves since a lot of the bedrock is limestone. That limestone (and thousands of years of erosion from the ground water) opened up a massive sinkhole under the Corvette museum which collapsed on February 12, 2014. The sinkhole ate up 8 Corvettes, all on loan to the museum. The sinkhole occurred in the skydome of the museum. Originally, the museum claimed they would restore all 8 of the cars. But once the cars started coming out it was apparent that this wasn’t going to happen. With all of the cars rescued, the museum decided three would be restored and the other five would be preserved as they were in homage to the sinkhole. As of publication, the sinkhole has been filled and the museum will be creating a full exhibit on the sinkhole, as well as a display of all of the affected cars. When we visited, work on the hole was still underway and only four of the cars were on display.
This was as close as we would be able to get to the sinkhole. As you can see, work was nearly complete, with the hole mostly closed up and the work concentrating on laying down a new floor. On the day we visited no work was actually going on.
Now onto the cars we could see. Contrast those shiny new Corvettes we’ve seen so far with this one; the first of the sinkhole Corvettes. This particular car was the 1.5 millionth Corvette ever built. It was a heavily optioned 2009 convertible, built as a homage to the very first ‘Vette ever built; white with red interior and a black top.
Today, this car is a crushed hulk, almost ironically representing the GM of the year it was built. Remember when GM was begging for money from the Government? Hard to believe that was only 6 short years ago.
I found it interesting how even though this car had dropped almost three stories, had three cars dropped on it, as well as many tons of dirt and concrete, the flip side mirror did its job exactly as designed. I suppose that’s the ultimate test of durability right there.
This was a 40th anniversary Corvette, originally built in 1993. While in decent shape, this car will be one of the five to never be restored. It seems underneath there is some extensive frame damage.
