You may remember that last year at the Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky the earth gave way and a sinkhole swallowed up a number of rare and historically significant examples of Chevrolet’s sports car.
After the cars were retrieved from the chasm, there was some debate about whether the cars would be restored or left as-is as a remembrance of the unusual event. Ultimately the decision was made to restore three of the eight cars and leave the rest as they were found. The car currently under the restoration knife is the 1992 “One Millionth Corvette”.
While some cars fared better than others in the incident, with the 2009 Corvette “Blue Devil” ZR1 being more or less drivable after being extracted from the sinkhole, others did not share the same good fortune. While certainly not the worst of the bunch (that honor probably goes to the 2001 Mallett Hammer Z06 Corvette, which was reportedly “almost unrecognizable” when it was pulled from the rubble), the One Millionth Corvette took a serious beating, with the drop top’s A-pillars collapsing, various other body damaged sustained, and the exposed interior needing a full restore.
Fortunately, the team at GM’s Mechanical Assembly group at the Design Center – an engineering division that normally focuses on prototypes and concept vehicles – were able to salvage many of the car’s original parts, and the restoration is well underway to make this car whole again. GM isn’t ready to give a time frame for the car’s official unveiling, but from the looks of the progress, we can’t imagine that date is too far away.