The sinkhole that swallowed eight Chevrolet Corvettes isn’t getting any bigger – that’s the first bit of good news for officials at the National Corvette Museum in the USA.
The second is that General Motors has said it will mount a rescue mission for the classic cars. “Our goal is to restore all eight cars, but it’s too soon to say if that’s feasible,” Chevrolet spokesman Monte Doran told news outlets.
Two of the cars – a 1993 ZR-1 Spyder and a 2009 ZR1 Blue Devil – were on loan from GM. But repairs to the cars and the museum won’t be quick.
The first task is to shore up the structure, then get the vehicles out. “Some of the cars look to be in very good shape,” said Doran. “However, other cars are completely buried in rubble, so it will likely be several weeks until we can get the cars out and assessed.”
Once the battered cars are out of the pit, they will be trucked to suburban Detroit where a specialist GM team will attempt to restore them. The other six Corvettes are a black 1962 model; a 1984 PPG pace car; the 1-millonth Corvette, built in 1992; a 1993 40th anniversary edition; a 2001 Mallett Hammer Z06; and the 2009 1.5-millionth Corvette. All six are owned by the museum.
On social media sites and TV news shows last week, viewers watched security camera replays of the Corvettes sliding into the 12m-wide, 9m-deep chasm that opened in the museum’s Skydome area, which is connected by a hallway to the main structure in Bowling Green, Kentucky.