From what I can see at this time the 1.5 millionth car is being uncovered as it was laying beneath the Spyder. Here is an update from NCM:
“When we started digging around the Black Spyder, we found a piece of white fiberglass underneath it and we continued to expose that until we saw that it was the 1.5 Millionth car,” said Mike Murphy, CEO of Scott, Murphy and Daniel Construction. “We had no idea where it was, we just happened upon it. We hope when we move the white car we find the red car that way, because we’ve just not had any luck detecting where it is.” Murphy indicated that they have utilized metal detectors as well as probing rods, and that they remove layers of dirt as they probe but have not had a lot of luck so far.
On Monday, the team worked to continue removing dirt from around the Spyder, then in the early evening decided to carefully pull the car out of the remaining dirt.
“It was free everywhere except underneath there was a concrete slab wedged. We felt we had it in the best position, just like pulling a gun out of a holster. Everyone felt like it was best to take it so it wouldn’t bend and break if we’d had it exposed more,” Murphy said.
The team resumed recovery efforts early Tuesday morning, removing a large boulder that was lodged in the cabin of the Spyder and collecting bits and pieces of the car to help with any restoration or preservation efforts. The Spyder was removed from the depths of the hole around 9am CT, and is in worse shape than even the PPG Pace Car.
I was just reading one of my favorite automotive periodicals “Hemmings Motor News” (April 14th) last night and I stopped by the letters to the editor section called ‘Backfire’. I usually just skim that section, I don’t normal care about someone else’s whine…I’m an IT guy, I get that all day. However, one letter caught my interest (maybe just because it was long). A reader had written a letter blasting way at “the publisher and advertisers” for promoting our hobby (car collecting, selling, restoration, etc.) in such a way as to ‘…pander to the individuals who take the interest in the industry only because of the financial gains that may be made through sale or investment in collector cars’. Which according to him was in direct philosophical opposition to many of the writers at Hemmings who complain about “…the fact that the collector-car industry has become so money driven.” To that I say “poppycock” and “balderdash”!! I’m not even British!!
He goes on to say that the ads promoting auctions and the articles that show the results of those auctions have value only to the ‘high roller’ segment of our hobby. Again – poppycock!!! (Oh…if you go to reprint/publish this {permission granted} and ‘poppycock’ is not in your lexicon of acceptable words – just replace with “BS”. I’m cool with that.)
It was good to see, however, that he understood that publishing such great works such as Hemmings Motor News isn’t free and you have to chase the advertising $$$ where it’s found.
Although he brought up a valid point, there are a lot of auction related ads/results/information/articles in Hemmings’ offering. For instance, 20 of the 53 most recent Hemmings Daily email messages either directly stated “auction” or had high-end priced car values – right in the titles. But I like reading that ‘stuff’!!!
Needless to say I disagree with the man from Menominee, Michigan that promoting auctions is evil and that there is something inherently damaging to the car enthusiast hobby by publishing the results. I’ll explain why in a minute but I have to set up the basis for my opinion.
I’ve restored a few cars, completely or in part (1966 Impala, 1969 Dodge Dart, 1971 Thunderbird, 1970 Chevelle, 1970 Mustang coupe – trophy winner, a 1984 C4 Corvette – 2 time trophy winner and working on a 1966 Bridgestone Dual Twin – my first attempt at a motorcycle ) and sold them, but I never made a profit – well maybe on the C4, I got that one in a title for title trade for a 1995 Celica – yes that did happen (see the story here….) and sold it for a good price.
Additional, I attend, in person, at least one “big guy” auction a year (most often it’s the Barrett Jackson in Scottsdale, AZ – just up the road a piece). Now, I have never purchased more than a hat, t-shirt, or some other trinket at these types of auctions, I just have this little blog and a lot enthusiasm, but not a lot of ‘free range’ cash. You have to attend at least one of these auctions to understand that there are some big dollar cars that pass in front of the auctioneer, but there other beautiful collectible cars that sell for reasonable prices. Just walking among some of the iconic classic vehicles is rewarding and I come away inspired!
I enjoy the auction information and their results in the Hemmings’ magazines for a couple of reasons. First, it is great to know where and when they are being held and what cars are worth getting an up close look at and photograph. Having a schedule helps with travel planning. (Get a Hemmings Calendar they are listed there.) Second, call me a “starry eyed optimistic, to the point of being delusional, car guy” (wife would just say “delusional”) but this type of information, in part, makes me see the potential in all kinds of cars. Just dreaming about taking something that is rough and creating something that others want or appreciate is very cool. It also gives me a threshold to try to obtain during a restoration – one I’ll never match 100% – average guy, with average skills and a below average budget – you know how that goes.
This inspiration would be dead on arrival, if I knew there was no way that a car could be restored. The big guy auctions and the high end restorers help keep the market for reproduction parts going and doors to salvage yards open, either by their purchase power or just by creating the want (need) to take that old VW bus setting on blocks at grandpa’s house and get it road worthy or airing up the tires on that Ford Mustang coupe sitting in the garage with a rod sticking out of the hood and creating a clone. This helps the hobby. It keeps it publicly visible, shows that there is value (even if it’s not always attainable by everyone – what is?) and promotes preservation of history by restoring to factory specs (or close) or creating history by customizing it. How many customized cars go on to be historic (try Ring Brothers Mustangs or a George Barris creation)?
There is one more over-looked area where these big auctions and car shows benefit the hobby. Size matters. If the industry is big and it makes money on the local, state and/or national level, two things are accomplished. First, a fan base is created that will reject the legislation trying to be passed to limit our hobby. Second, generate enough ‘horse power’ (pronounced ‘revenue’) to lobby politicians (pronounced ‘showing them the light’) to prevent passage of laws that restrict our hobby. Both very helpful.
So guys and gals at Hemmings (the best automotive periodical publishing company, ever!!! OMG!!!) I don’t care if you have to sell ads for ‘work at home schemes’, as long as you can keep Mike McNessor writing, Richard Lentinello pontificating, the other contributors submitting articles and make Daniel Strohl stop doing whatever that thing is he does with abandoned cars (just kidding – love those too) I’ll always be a happy subscriber!!
“Initially there was no intention to bring the Millionth out, but as we got in there and saw more this morning we did feel like this might be our best chance,” said Danny Daniel, President of Scott, Murphy and Daniel Construction.
Danny indicated that they pulled the car by one wheel from where it was lodged and it swung free into the cavern. They were then able to lift the car and place it to rest, upside down on the bottom of the sinkhole. Finally, the Corvette was hooked up by its two tires for final lifting out of the sinkhole, much like the process to retrieve the 1993 40th Anniversary.
“Went like a champ, we were tickled to death,” added Daniel.
“The Millionth Corvette has been through a lot, but the damage at first glance seems to be less extensive than what it could have been, especially given the precarious spot the car landed,” said Bob Hellmann, Facilities and Displays Manager at the Museum. “The undercarriage and frame look to be in good condition and everything is repairable.”
The Millionth Corvette was built at 2:00pm on July 2, 1992 in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Just like the first 1953 Corvettes, it bears a white exterior, red interior and is a convertible. The car was donated to the Corvette Museum by General Motors. In a press release from 1991, Jim Perkins, General Manager for Chevrolet at the time, said “We’ve been looking for a way to support the goals of the museum, which are to enshrine a great car and the great people who made it an American institution.” This donation came two years before the museum that exists today had opened its doors.
She looks a little rough to me.
I have to take a minute to give job well done to the crew working the rescue. Lots of people appreciate their efforts. I having pulled a RV from a 100 ravine with a tow truck, it’s nerve racking job….these guys are pros.
March 4, 2014 Update from Museum Executive Director Wendell Strode
March 4, 2014 at 8:15am
Today the construction and engineering team extracts the 1962. After that there will be additional work done to stabilize the red spire, the walls of the sinkhole and the area immediately around the walls. This will take approximately 3 weeks.
After this has been completed, the construction firm employees will begin removing the dirt, concrete, rebar, Stinger lift, safety barriers and everything else until the remaining 5 cars have been extracted. The timeline for this is approximately an additional 3 weeks.
Thanks for your patience during Operation Corvette +!
Two classic Corvettes re-emerged Monday from a giant sinkhole that gobbled up those and six other prized vehicles still trapped beneath the National Corvette Museum in Kentucky. Workers in a cage painstakingly hooked straps around the cars before a …
Sorry let this slip a couple of days. Here are your Auto Factoids for this week.
2/16/1951 – Nash Healey debuts in US
This was a totally by change partnership. Healey was on his way back to England for the US after GM refused to sell him Cadillac engines for his cars, when he met George Mason of Nash-Kelvinator on the ship. For 1951 Nash-Kelvinator supplied the engines and drivetrain, specifically an inline six-cylinder OHV 234.8 cu in (3.85 L) engine and three-speed manual transmission with Borg-Warneroverdrive, plus torque tube and differential. Healey made a few mods to the engine like higher-compression aluminum cylinder head (replacing the cast-iron stock item) with twin 1.75-inch (44 mm) SU carburetors that were popular on British sports cars. This increased power from the stock 112 hp (84 kW; 114 PS) version to 125 hp (93 kW; 127 PS). The car was longer and heavier than most European cars and although the 125 hp helped, it fell short of the original expectations that included Cadillac’s 331 cu in (5.4 L).
This what we here in the US were able to purchase for the first time in 1951.
1951 Nash Healey
2/18/1952 – Studebaker 100 years
Studebaker turned 100-year-old this date in 1952 and it offered up a few beauties for their customers.
Like the Star Light, Land Cruiser and 1/2 ton Pickup.
52 Star Light – Love the ‘split 4 piece’ rear window.
This huge ’52 Land Cruiser would get across country with room for luggage!!
Workhorse 1/2 ton pickup. Hard to find one now that hasn’t been customized.
2/18/1898 – Enso Ferrari born in Modena, Italy
Would you by a car from this face?
What if they looked like this?
Hell Yeah!!!!
2/20/1954 – Detroit – Chicago Auto show saw Dodge’s Fire Arrow
Ghia Dodge Firearrow II Sports Coupe 1954
That is a nice looking car!!! If you visually mess around it a bit, you might see some resemblance to the Crossfire. Yes? No?
Maybe?? A little?
Or something from a different manufacture.
’64_Pininfarina Corvette
2/21/1948 – NASCAR’s first race – held in Daytona, FL
Historic First – a bit dusty…but awesome (no I wasn’t actually there!!).
And let’s go waaaaay back 2/22/1732 – George Washington was born in Virgina.
Well George didn’t actually own a car…but if he did, ask yourself “What would George Drive?” Post up what you think the father of our country would drive today.
Keeping the proper prospective, (no humans were harmed) but it’s a shame to lose those beautiful one of a kind, historic cars.
So what’s next?
Apparently they believe the rest of the National Corvette Museum building it’s self is sound as is the rest of the grounds under the 184-acre Motorsports Park, which is opening in August.
But what should happened to the cars?
Should they be restored?
Should they stay as they are and preserved?
Let me know what you think.
Give me some feedback and I’ll send it on the Museum folks.
A couple posts back I wrote on my chance meeting with the Maserati – Chrysler TC Club….no it’s fine go back and look…we’ll wait. (Insert whistling sound.) One response mentioned that the Maserati/ Chrysler TC was …”two years late to market.” (Bill February 10, 2014 at 12:00 PM).
That didn’t occur to me about the TC but I had just finished reading an article in Hemmings Motor News the Muscle Car Profile section – 1969 Plymouth Baracuda 383. It was written by Terry McGean.
The article chats about the 383 and the Formula S package. But the article starts out by saying That Chrysler peeps are pretty sure they started the “pony” car craze by revamping the Valiant line of cars to come up with the Baracuda just before Ford released the Mustang. And that is the case but unfortunately the A-body wasn’t up to par with the Mustang and the Camaro in the performance department and both cars left the Valiant platform in the dust or as Terry wrote “…Ford mastered the art of re-skinning an economy model as a sporting coup, or else these cars would have been called ‘Fish cars’…(I’m inserting a chuckle here.)…From there Plymouth seemed to be chasing the Mustang and not long after the Camaro and Firebird twins.”
This ties in to what I thought about when Mother Mopar came out with the Charger. It was a horrible attempt at recapturing the ‘pony’ car era. Ford had already re-invented the Mustang buy then and Chevy gave the C6 Corvette a retro ’60’s style shape and then came the Camaro and still Chrysler didn’t have the answer, until the Challenger. That was nicely done and I love it, but it was still late to the party again.
I thought they might make a hit with the ‘Dodge Dart’, I considered that a pony car of sorts, but instead we got a Dodge Neon.
’65 Cuda
’65 Mustang
’65 Camaro
Thanks for reading.
Tim
Rare 65 Plymouth Baracuda (East Bend ) $4000 http://t.co/yi6ZSjs7Fb http://t.co/qW3XHkYLLY
Make: Plymouth Model: Baracuda Year: 1965 Body Style: Sedan Exterior Color: Red Interior Color: Red Doors: Four Doors Vehicle Condition:… Collectible – Classic Cars Plano.
2/4/1913- Perlman patents the demountable tire rim
(Few years later – Feb 24, 1925 Lewis K. McClellan got a patent for his improvements.)
from http://www.wired.com/thisdayintech/2009/05/dayintech_0521/:
Back in the earliest days of the automobile, radiators were brass, headlamps had wicks, cars were made as much of wood as metal, and wheels and tires were a single unit. The tires were solid rubber, and the wheels were wooden hub-and-spoke setups not unlike what you’d find on a horse-drawn wagon. Each one was affixed to the car by a single nut, and they were, for all engineering purposes, treated as a single unit.
The tires were about the width of a business card and provided roughly the same level of grip. On the upside, they were pretty darn tough. But, like everything else on a car, they would eventually wear out. At that point, you had to replace the tire and the wheel, even if the wheel was just fine.
Perlman knew there had to be a better way, and he found it.
His demountable tires (patent No. 1,052,270) worked pretty much like the ones on your car right now. A bead — that’s the inner rim of the tire — held the tire against a groove machined into the wheel. The friction of shallow notches kept the tire from rotating on the wheel, though some early applications used a cumbersome screw-clamp system.
The only downside was the tire-and-wheel assembly had to be balanced to prevent vibrations and ensure a smooth ride, but that wasn’t a big problem. Today no one thinks twice about it (except when they forget to get it done).
Perlman’s invention led to the adoption of pneumatic (inflated) tires, which provide much better performance. It also allowed automobile owners to choose their own wheels, which is one of the most common ways of customizing one’s ride.
From the U.S. Patent Office
From the U.S. Patent Office
2/5/1925 Ethyl Lead gas goes on sale
100% Leaded!!!
2/5/1970 AMC buys Kaiser Jeep
Now every knows AMC and that the Jeep went from there to become an part of Chrysler and now is technically part of Fiat, but not too many people, outside of Jeep collectors where it was before that time. Kaiser Jeep was created out of a merger between Kaiser-Frazer car builders and Willy’s Overland company. Willy’s Jeep was famous for the jeeps built to support WW II. Willy’s also made cars, but both companies (Willy’s and K/F) stopped making passenger cars in 1955 and continued to manufacture Jeeps, including the famous Jeep Wagoneer – the first soccer Mom vehicle, and the CJ, under the name Willy Motors. In 1963 they changed the name to Kaiser Jeep Corporation. After the AMC purchase the company Jeep Corporation was formed as a subsidiary of AMC.
2/5/1846 – The founder of Dunlop tires birthday – John Boyd Dunlop – Dreghorn, England
2/6/1951 – Kaiser introduces it’s Silver Dragon
The Silver Dragon or Dragon was a option package on what was actually just the Kaiser Manhattan. It had vinyl upholstery that simulated alligator and Kaiser was afraid that customers were shy away from the cars thinking actual alligator was used so they called it Dragon skin and the model was tag as “Dragon”.
Produced from 1951-1953
1953 Kaiser
2/7/1942 – U.S. Government “requests” (orders) auto makers to switch to wartime production and stop building cars.
2/7/1958 – The car world is introduced to the 600 Automatic Transmission – Dutch DAF
The first continuously variable transmission (automatic) developed by the Dutch car manufacturer DAF (although one was used in England circa 1923 – guess it wasn’t a big hit back then). DAF produced some ‘cute’ cars:
The 600
The car that made the automatic transmission popular.
1964, but in an era of cheap gasoline many motorists preferred a V-8. Thus, when GM found itself with more sixes than it needed, it sold the Buick V-6 rights and tooling to the Kaiser-Jeep Corp. in 1967. K-F named it the “Dauntless 225” and used it in …
“My goal was to build an expedition vehicle. I had been shopping for a truck to design and build for sustained off-road travel,” says Kevin Mackie of Milpitas, California. The story of how he ended up buying and building this ’69 Kaiser M715 began with …
If you’ve been reading my ‘stuff’ for a while, you’ll know that this site is not a commercial enterprise. The ads you see here are just products or services I like. No money has ever exchanged hands. Even the Car Art page is offered gratuitously.
So I’m going break my tradition and add one more ad – mine!
With over 30 years ‘living’ with cars I’ve decided to take my passion to the next level. As my regular readers know, I grew up around cars, hanging with my Dad as he worked on ours and working in his auto body shops on and off for all my teenage years. We did everything from replacement panels to welding two car halves together to make one (a Datsun 510) to complete paint jobs with bondo work to painting the Coke swirl on the deliver trucks. I learned to use a porta-power jack and a slam hammer to straighten out some of the worse dents – acceptable back then and even today.
My first car was a 1966 Chevy Impala convertible, loving restored by my Dad for my graduation (back in 1976). A couple years later I restored a 1970 Plymouth Duster, with a 318 and three speed. This was upstate New York so there was a lot of body work on this car. Next up was a girl friends 1971 Thunderbird, liked that car more than I did her…well I missed the car more anyway. Next up was a 1970 Chevelle, automatic with a 350 (nothing special back then), mostly tinkered with that and it died on a highway in eastern Nebraska. After that there was a gap of a few years, while I joined the military, traveled the world, got married and raised a son.
And if you’ve been a regular reader of this blog you’ll know my history with my first Corvette. Lots of work on this first year C4 generation Vette. I replaced every bushing and rubber component, including the mounts for the transmission, etc. The work I completed on this car earned two car show trophies (not Pebble Beach caliber – but best in class in medium to large local car shows).
If you’ll took a look at the Mustang tab on this blog you can see the restoration of my 1970 Mustang. Now I had some of this work done for me, but I kept a close eye on the details and budget. This included a complete paint job, welding, new motor mounts were need to let the bored 302 to be placed between the finders, custom pulleys for mounting the A/C, power steering and alternator. I did all the upholstery myself and replaced the original three speed transmission with the a stock Shelby 4 speed complete with Hurst Competition Plus Shifter. You can read the rest on these pages.
This is a long introduction to my services. I’m recently obtained my Classic Car Auto Appraisal certification and I specialize in classic, muscle, and specialty vehicles (racing and modified cars). Additionally with all my experience restoring cars I’ve begun to offer my services as a restoration project manager.
The appraisal service is pretty straight forward. The project management service is not unique but more then just consulting. I’m currently managing the restoration of a rare VW bug for a car lover – but not car girl. You’ll see more of that coming up, as it’s now in the 2nd year of it’s “every bolt off” restoration. Did I mention two of my restorations won 3 car show best in class trophies? My ’70 Mustang and my ’84 Corvette.
See more on the Services page or contact me directly.
1,000,000 Corvette was pulled from the sinkhole at the Corvette Museum today.
to complete paint jobs with bondo work to painting the Coke swirl on the deliver trucks. I learned to use a porta-power jack and a slam hammer to straighten out some of the worse dents – acceptable back then and even today.
