A Sinkhole Swallowed Cars at The Corvette Museum And Now Everyone Wants To Go | TIME.
A view of a sinkhole that opened up in the Skydome
Tourism up 50%….that’s great!!!
Tim
So it ends, at least the recovery part of the ill-fated “Great 8” as dubbed by the National Corvette Museum folks.
The Mallett Hammer comes to the surface.
As with a couple of the others – this is how I expected to see them come to the surface.
From the NCM:
The 2001 Mallett Hammer Z06 was one of two Corvettes that’s whereabouts were initially unknown after the sinkhole happened. The car was finally discover this Monday, upside down with the nose pointing towards the red Spire in the center of the room. It is, by far, the most heavily damaged of all eight Corvettes.
“It looks like the worst one… a lot of parts and pieces,” said Mike Murphy, CEO of Scott, Murphy and Daniel Construction. “It took a lot of punishment from a lot of big rocks.”
The Mallett Hammer was donated to the Museum this past December by Kevin and Linda Helmintoller of Land O’ Lakes, Florida, Lifetime Members of the Museum and previous R8C Museum Delivery participants. Upon hearing the car had been located, Kevin traveled to Kentucky to witness the rescue operation. “I expected bad, but it’s 100 times worse,” he said. “It looks like a piece of tin foil… and it had a roll cage in it! It makes all the other cars look like they’re brand new.”
Strode had forewarned Helmintoller that the car would be in bad shape and he might not want to watch the recovery process. “Honestly though, I’m still glad I’m here because I would have never believed it was this bad. I’m not positive I would have recognized it – there are just a few little pieces that give it away.”
Helmintoller added that he sent pictures of the damaged car to his engine builder, who (jokingly) was quick to point out that the motor was not covered under warranty.
Kevin and Linda spent 13 years modifying the Corvette, a car they purchased new in 2001. The Mallett Hammer conversion was completed in June 2002 and since then has had many AntiVenom LSX Performance modifications with the car boasting 700hp with 575 torque at the flywheel. The car’s speed achievements helped it score a cover of GM High Tech Performance magazine.
GM has said they would restore them. I look at this one and the Spyder and say “Really?” Same VIN number perhaps…not a lot more.
Although the recovery is completed – other than fishing out the top parts of the “Hammer” there is still a long way to go for rebuilding that part of the museum and restoring the cars.
I hope GM keeps great video records and that they release them to the public to allow us to keep track of the progress. That ought to be a good History Channel – nearly live – documentary, yes? For sure a dedicated YouTube channel. (Not sure live 24 hour camera coverage would be of much value.)
I’ve hyped the National Corvette Museum and urging folks to donate and I still do (Here’s the link again. Donate Click Here ) they need the assistance. But that’s because Corvettes are my thing (one of them, anyway), but there are a lot of car museum’s across the country that are doing a great job preserving vehicles of interest.
Right here in Tucson, Az is the Franklin Museum with a very nice collection of Franklin cars. Find one near you!!
Thanks for reading.
Tim
The digging continues at the National Corvette Museum (NCM). The goal is to uncover the beautiful Mallett Hammer Z06 Corvette to the point where it’s removal.
Here is the latest picture provided by the NCM and it’s not pretty with the shiny side down.
Thanks to the guys doing all the work down there in the sinkhole!!!!
Here is a link to donate to the museum. GM is restoring the cars but the museum has to fix the sinkhole after the Vettes are removed.
Thanks for reading.
Tim
National Corvette Museum
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The Spyder hood has been found! Thanks Timmy with SMD for taking this pic. They also found a badge that had come off the car that was also autographed.
That’s Great!!! Look at all the signatures….HEY…LET’S NOT RESTORE THIS HOOD!!!!
Thanks to this guy and all the workers. NICELY DONE!!! Can’t wait for the beautiful 1.5 to surface!!!
Thanks for reading.
Tim
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.
ZR1Spyder – The only ZR1 convertible…EVER!!!
ZR1 Spyder and the location of the 1.5 Mil
Current location of the 1.5 Mil Corvette
Thanks for reading.
Tim
Watch the video, you’ll see a good close up of the first three cars and seem them on display “as is”.
Thanks for reading.
Tim
Five of eight Corvettes pulled from museum sinkhole; photos show heavy …
4 More Corvettes still to be rescued.
1,000,000 Corvette was pulled from the sinkhole at the Corvette Museum today.
Thanks for reading.
Tim
Looking forward to crossing out more in next few weeks.
NCM:
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 +!
https://www.facebook.com/notes/national-corvette-museum/march-4-2014-update-from-museum-executive-director-wendell-strode/10152032860386705
I spend sometime with the live feed at NCM and I watched as they placed the Blue Devil in a sling to be hauled up tomorrow (3/3).
2009 ZR1 Blue Devil.
Blue Devil – will be raised from his current rest place.
Thanks for reading.
Tim
