Skip to footer

Final Corvette pulled from Kentucky sinkhole

Officials at the National Corvette Museum say they'll try to repair the eight Chevrolet Corvettes that fell into a sinkhole under the institution in February, but some of the cars – valued as a group at about $1 million – may be beyond repair.

|
National Corvette Museum/AP/File
In this undated photo provided by the National Corvette Museum, workers pull out a car from a sinkhole at the National Corvette Museum, in Bowling Green, Ky. On Wednesday, April 9, 2014, workers pulled the last car from the sinkhole, completing weeks of painstaking work to retrieve eight classic cars that were gobbled up by the gaping hole.
  • By Stephen Edelstein Guest blogger

The last of eight Corvettes has been rescued from a sinkhole under the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Well, sort of. There isn't much left of the Mallet Hammer Z06 except for a few pieces of mangled wreckage. It must have been a heart-wrenching scene for everyone involved in the recovery, including the car's former owner Kevin Helmintoller.

Helmintoller donated the tuned Z06 to the museum last December, at which time it was appraised at $125,000, according to Fox News. Given it's current condition, the Mallet Hammer may put the brakes on the museum's plan to restore all eight sinkhole cars, with help from General Motors.

Since crews began pulling the cars out of the sinkhole, the news has been mixed. While the 2009 Corvette ZR1 known as "Blue Devil" appeared to have only superficial damage, things seemed to get worse as the cars that had fallen further were recovered.

Yet the crumpled Mallet Hammer Z06 and the other seven unfortunate Corvettes will be on display at the museum until the end of August. The group--which the museum calls the "Great 8"--is reportedly valued at around $1 million.

The massive sinkhole opened up under the museum's Skydome in late February, sparking conspiracy theories and plenty of publicity that may benefit the museum in the long run. Repairs to those Corvettes that can be worked on are expected to be completed by early August.

_______________________________________

Follow Motor Authority on Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Final Corvette pulled from Kentucky sinkhole
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Business/In-Gear/2014/0412/Final-Corvette-pulled-from-Kentucky-sinkhole
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe