Leena Robinson / Shutterstock.com
February 12, 2014;Fox News
What’s that saying again—men plan and God laughs? Some eventualities just creep up on you. The nonprofit National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky, suffered an unanticipated crisis Wednesday morning when a 40-foot-wide sinkhole opened up underneath a floor that held eight rare Corvettes. A video of the incident can be seen here. (Don’t watch it if you love Corvettes.) In its press release, the museum, which attracts 150,000 visitors a year, said, “It is with heavy hearts that we report that eight Corvettes were affected by this incident.”
“This is going to be an interesting situation,” Museum Executive Director Wendell Strode said, adding that structural engineers from Western Kentucky University’s engineering department were at the museum checking out what could and should be done. In fact, we have a video of their drone-facilitated view of the situation.
Sign up for our free newsletters
Subscribe to NPQ's newsletters to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.
By signing up, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of use, and to receive messages from NPQ and our partners.
One 1983 Corvette was saved, but eaten up by the hole were a 1993 ZR-1 Spyder and 2009 ZR1 “Blue Devil” on loan from General Motors, a 1962 Black Corvette, a 1984 PPG Pace Car, a 1992 White 1 Millionth Corvette, a 1993 Ruby Red 40th Anniversary Corvette, a 2001 Mallett Hammer Z06 Corvette, and a 2009 White 1.5 Millionth Corvette.
Bowling Green is where General Motors builds the Corvette. The city is in Kentucky’s Western Pennyroyal area, where deep caves run underground. We imagine that this organization probably has constituents with deep reserves of passion for the cause, and that the institution will probably be fine after it figures out the structural concerns.—Ruth McCambridge