We had a great visit at the Corvette Museum in Bowling Green. To see so many Corvette’s in one place was interesting. You were able to walk through a timeline of when it all started until current. “Since 1953 the Corvette has been America’s Sports Car. The National Corvette Museum was established as a 501(c)3 not-for-profit foundation with a mission of celebrating the invention of the Corvette; preserving its past, present and future; and educating the public about Corvette. The Museum opened in 1994 and is a 115,000 square foot facility located on a 55 acre campus. Bowling Green, Kentucky is home to the world’s only General Motors Corvette Assembly Plant.” There was no attendance limitations. The only restriction was to wear a mask – which is standard nowadays.
One interesting thing we found out about was the Corvette Emblem with a red flag and checkered flag.
As you enter the museum, you are greeted with a display highlighting Harley Earl’s success on designing the Corvette.
The main attraction, of course, was the sight of the Corvette Cave In. “The National Corvette Museum made international news headlines on February 12, 2014 when a sinkhole collapsed in the Skydome of the Museum in the wee hours of the morning. Thankfully, no one was in the building when it happened, but security cameras were rolling to catch the incident on camera.” Throughout this section you actually see the outline of the sinkhole on floor. Below is a picture from the week showing what happened. “The Bowling Green Daily News reports that the sinkhole, said to be about 20 ft. deep and 30 to 40 ft. in diameter, triggered motion-detector alarms at 5:38 AM in the dome area of the museum. The eight cars claimed by the sinkhole include the 1993 ZR-1 Spyder, a 2009 “Blue Devil” ZR1, a black 1962 roadster, a 1984 PPG Pace Car, the 1 Millionth Corvette (a white ’92 model), a 1993 40th Anniversary Corvette, a 2001 Mallett Hammer Corvette Z06, and the 1.5 Millionth Corvette (a white ’09 car). The two ZR1s were on loan from General Motors, while the rest of the cars were owned by the museum.” The cars are now staged where they were before the sink in. The 2009 Corvette ZR1 prototype, nicknamed the Blue Devil, and the 1 millionth Corvette built, a white 1992 convertible and the 1962 Corvette was restored. Words cannot describe what you see/feel while looking at these. It was interesting to see how the cars were crushed, etc.
So after leaving the cave in area, we entered the “Cartoon Creatures, Kustom Kars and Corvettes: The Art and Influence of Ed ‘Big Daddy’ Roth” exhibit through April 2021. “Back in the 1950s and ’60s, kids who liked cars bought hot rod magazines along with t-shirts, models, stickers and toys from Roth Studios. They featured caricatures of cars with giant smoking slicks and fire coming out of the exhaust, with blown engines and cartoon monsters at the wheel. Tom would begin copying those drawings, and in the process, he learned about how to draw cars with personalities and attitudes. The monsters were just cool. The most notable one was Rat Fink, who will serve as the mascot throughout this exhibit.”
That wraps up some of our pictures from the Corvette Museum. We hope this triggers you putting this on your list to visit. It was fun to see them all.
