NEWS: 5 Sinkhole Consumed Corvettes Freed – 3 More to Go *Updated*
Construction crews began extracting the 8 Corvettes that fell into sinkhole more than a week ago at the National Corvette Museum Monday morning.
The 2009 ZR1 “Blue Devil” prototype was first to be rescued, not surprising seeing as she was on top of the pile. The ZR1 wasn’t too beat up considering the fact she fell into a sinkhole, the engine actually started and she drove out of the museum under her own power.
The 1993 40th Anniversary Corvette known as “Ruby” was extracted next. In comparison she looks to have taken the most damage - to put it bluntly, she’s hurt bad. The front clip is pretty much toast, however keep in mind she landed on her roof and there are 5 more Corvettes literally buried under soil and concrete so we wouldn’t be surprised if a few of those come out looking worse than her.
Tuesday crews mined the black 1962 Corvette. Again, not bad in this case, mostly cosmetic but looks promising.The National Corvette Museum is open to the public with respect to the Sky Dome which for the time being is a roped off hard hat zone while construction crews are working.
Although no extractions were expected, the crew at the National Corvette Museum were busy surveying the sinkhole searching for the next viable car to pull out Wednesday. Much to our surprise the 1,000,000 Corvette was successfully rescued. She's beat up for sure but certainly restorable The 1984 Corvette Pace Car was alos later pulled from the sinkhole Wednesday. She doesn’t look good, in fact she took one heck of a beating. Every panel, the roof, and the dash have taken serious damage on the Pace Car. Good thing GM is back this restoration.
All 8 Corvette’s will be displayed after the cars have been saved, then sent to Detroit where GM will oversee their meticulous restoration.
Stay tuned as we’ll be reporting as the remaining Corvettes are rescued. Check out our Gallery of the cars as they'll pulled from the sinkhole.
Posted by: Nick Cavanaugh; Editor-in-Chief
Image credit: National Corvette Museum
