After much discussion regarding the merits of repairing the sinkhole that struck the Corvette Museum in February, and keeping in mind the seventy-percent boost in foot traffic afterwards, the facility has announced that it will be repairing the sinkhole, and restoring three of the eight cars damaged in the event, this November.
The NCM announced on its blog that the sinkhole will be filled-in after a November “Vets and Vettes” event.
Keeping even a portion of the sinkhole would require 35 foot retaining walls to be built inside of the sinkhole, additional micro piling, visible steel beams running through the hole, and soil nailing. All of these additional structural features are to ensure the safety of the sinkhole and prevent cracking and breaking of the sides in the future, which could result in stability issues, but take away from the natural look of the original sinkhole. The board also considered future maintenance issues that could arise if the hole was kept and the possibility that the hole wouldn’t look like a naturally occurring sinkhole any longer.
General Motors will be contributing approximately $250,000 to the repair of the sinkhole and the restoration of three Corvettes. The Blue Devil ZR1 prototype and the 1992 “millionth” Corvette will be restored by GM Heritage, while the NCM will restore the ’62 Corvette using GM funding. The other five will be left as-is in a special display.
Now’s the time to get to the NCM and see these cars — I know I’m going to.
I’d better hurry and see it now then. Good it’s going away. There’s nothing uglier than an unnatural looking sinkhole.
Don’t forget the second largest ball of twine on the face of the earth, which is only four short hours away. :D
Don’t you want to see the house of mud?
Looks like they are just being tossed into a giant trash can–where they belong. All of them.
Did you wake up this morning and think to yourself, “Today I’m going to, without any prior provocation and for no good reason, insult a car model”? Or did it just come out of the blue?
No, he just decided to be a douche.
I can see it now, they’ll have a concrete truck back up to the hole and start pumping…..and pumping, and pumping, and pumping, and pumping, and pumping….and then somewhere in Virginia a geyser of concrete will spray up out of the ground.
“Well shyoot, Cletus, this’s gotta be the sixth load a’ see-ment we dun purred down thar. Whar’s it all goin’, ah wonder?”
“Ah guess Ol’ Man Jefferson wuz right when he said this hyer was the mutheruvall sinkhawls.”
Ahh, every now and then you hear about a construction project accidentally pouring yards and yards (and yards and yards and yards) of concrete into a sewer pipe before discovering their mistake-in-progress!
Too bad they didn’t save the EV-1’s instead of crushing them, they could have filled the hole with them….that and a crapload of Atari ET The Extra Terrestrial videogames.
Plus the nearly unlimited supply of Jar Jar Binks action figures…
I’m confused. What attraction am I going to see here or am interested in going there to see? A natural disaster? Classic cars? Classic natural disaster?
Oh wait, cash in on something! Spectacle! Internet sensation!
Looks like they already started filling it with Corvettes.
[statlerwaldorf]
Dohohohoho!
[/statlerwaldorf]
Imagine how many C4’s I could buy with $250,000, or C3’s with junkyard LT1 swaps from Roadmaster wagons and aftermarket exhaust headers that could easily pass for a muscle car era Corvette.
Well sh*t, if you’re gonna do an engine swap into a C3 and you have an absurd budget, might as well buy a LS376, LS7, or LSA crate motor.
I’d rather have the Roadmaster wagon. Ultimate sleeper–no one would take you seriously until you put your foot down and awaken the beast.
But of course!
The sedan is also pretty damned sleepy-looking if you don’t want a wagon but still want to have a 450 horsepower grandpa car.
Why would I not want the wagon? I love woodgrain, both ironically and sincerely.
“Imagine how many C4′s I could buy with $250,000”
I tell ya it’s like pouring money down a hole !.
What really happened here was that VW had some of it’s workers dig a tunnel from their Tennessee factory over to the Corvette museum in order to get back at us for what the Allied tunnelers did to them along the German lines at Messines during WW-1.
Better late than never.
I heard Toyota in Georgetown was joining digging forces. It’s about 40 miles closer than Chattanooga. The Japanese must have had a resentment about something.
If Toyota was going to tunnel anywhere it would be northwest to the Louisville Ford Truck plant. Number 1 vehicle title baby!
I read recently that near the French-Swiss border, where the Allies had imploded some German trenches and tunnels, that a farmer stumbled upon the remains of a “catacomb” where they found the bodies of 12 German soldiers.
The soldier’s personal artifacts were actually very well preserved, including a 1918 German newspaper which predicted that victory would come by year’s end.
> Corvette Museum Will Fill Sinkhole
That seems like one of the best uses of a “Corvette Museum” that I can think of. Sinkholes are a real problem here in the dirty South, especially after all this fracking got approved.
If they are lucky the sinkhole will be large enough to dump every Chevrolet Cobalt in existence in it.
With a quarter million bucks I’m sure there would even be cash money left over.
I’ll be here all week, be sure to tip your waitress…
:D
They could all those removed recalled GM ignition switches as filler.
On seconds thoughts, the scrap switches are probably not strong enough and we can’t have more injuries.