The Corvette Museum Will Only Fix 3 of the Sinkhole Cars, Skydome Floor to be Sealed

When a sinkhole opened up under the National Corvette Museum and swallowed 8 cars on February 12th, General Motors was quick to step forward and announce that they would repair all of the cars back to original condition. As time went on and the Corvettes were removed from the sinkhole, the folks from the National Corvette Museum considered keeping the sinkhole – or at least a portion of it – left alone for every visitor in the future to see what kind of havoc Mother Nature can inflict upon a well-engineered building.

Unfortunately, GM made that commitment to fix the damaged cars before “The Great Eight” Corvettes had been removed from the hole under the museum and the consideration of keeping part of the sinkhole as a big, open crater in the floor of the Museum’s Skydome exhibit came up before the engineers and bean counters had met to discuss the costs and feasibility of keeping the sinkhole open.

GM Will Fix Three of The Great Eight
When the Earth swallowed 8 historic Corvettes back in February, the Corvette and American performance car community was upset over the loss of a collection of such important cars in American motoring history. General Motors made everyone feel a little better about the whole situation when the company announced that once The Great Eight were unburied and removed from the hole, they would have the cars shipped back to Metro Detroit for a full restoration.

Sadly, as the crew got deeper into the sinkhole and the Corvettes which were buried the deepest were unearthed, they were all completely destroyed. The level of damage was so extensive that the company wouldn’t be fixing them – they would be rebuilding them from the ground up. Fortunately, the group working on how to handle this whole problem deemed three cars to be in good enough shape that they could actually be fixed rather than being rebuilt.

The three Corvettes from The Great Eight that will be repaired are the 2009 Corvette Blue Devil ZR1, the 1992 Corvette Convertible that was the 1,000,000th Corvette ever built and the black 1962 Corvette. Those three cars will be restored to what is likely better-than-new condition and returned to the museum.

The five Corvettes from The Great Eight which were deemed too badly damaged to be repaired are the 1993 ZR-1 Spyder, the 1984 PPG Pace Car, the 1993 40th Anniversary Corvette (which has actually been replaced thanks to a generous donor), the 2001 "Mallett Hammer" Z06 and the 2009 Corvette which was the 1,500,000th Corvette ever built. Those cars left damaged will continue to be part of a special Sinkhole display…but the sinkhole itself will soon be gone.

The Sinkhole Will Be Sealed
Over the past few months, there were rumors that at least part of the floor space that collapsed into the sinkhole under the National Corvette Museum would be left as-is, so that attendees could see just how much damage a sinkhole can do. Unfortunately, the costs of repairing the Skydome floor and the ground under it in a manner that is safe and stable enough to be left open forever would be astronomical. Even though the sinkhole is already an incredibly expensive problem for the museum, reinforcing the hole in a way that would allow part of it to be left open would be even more costly so on the behalf of cost savings and safety – the sinkhole will be reinforced, maybe filled up and completely covered over. This means that if you want to see the sinkhole in person, you shouldn’t make your way to the National Corvette Museum very soon.

Click here for a look at each of The Great Eight Corvettes which were swallowed by the sinkhole and click any of the links below for a closer look at the cars as they were exhumed.

The Great Eight As They Were Removed with details and images from the National Corvette Museum:
The 2009 Corvette Blue Devil ZR1
The 1984 PPG Pace Car
The black 1962 Corvette
The 1992 Corvette Convertible that was the 1,000,000th Corvette built
The 1984 PPG Pace Car
The 2009 Corvette which was the 1,500,000th Corvette ever built
The 2001 "Mallett Hammer" Z06