National Corvette Museum, Bowling Green KY

So we were in town and decide to visit the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green KY. Go figure the factory tours were not going until the new year. I guess they added a new paint booth and didn't want you to get your shoes dirty or something. Anyway the tour of the museum was great with a tour guide. I'm trying something new here. I will try and explain some of the pictures I took of the museum (remember you can click on them to see a bigger picture. But if you cannot wait, then here is the link to all the pictures.

So let's start. Disclaimer, this is what I heard during the tour. It doesn't necessarily mean this is what he said or if he was right. But he was old, so you never know. The first picture (the one on the left...they are all on the left...unless they aren't.) is the first Corvette. You say "WHAT? That's not a Corvette!". Well, this is where you are wrong, Corvette means "a lightly armed, fast ship used mostly for convoy escort and ranging in size between a destroyer and a gunboat." So there!

In case you never saw it, this is the first Corvette emblem. It was never used. I guess a few days before they launched the corvette, the lawyers come running down the stairs waving there hands, stating "We can't use that! We can't use that!" I guess back then (in the 50's) you couldn't use the american flag on merchandise or something. So then changed the american flag to the one that looks like the second picture.

He talked about Zora Arkos-Duntov a lot. He was the one that called up the CEO and said hey, I like the car, but unless you do something about the power and handling, you will never beat the foreign sports cars. So the CEO said come on over and help us out. The two pictures you see are one with a statue of him holding the Cam shaft he designed and also in the same picture is the urn of him and his wife (he is the big gold box, she is the smaller one). The other picture is the car he drove all the time.


This picture depicts a typical car lot selling the corvette. They don't do that anymore. All corvettes are made to order. If you see a new one on the lot, then the dealership bought it. He also mentioned if you ordered the C01, you can build your own engine. At the end of that process, they create a plaque with the tech's name and your name and mount it on the engine so everyone can see it forever.



The next couple of pictures are concept cars. Some of the visions are in use today, over 45 years later. They also switched from fiberglass to Carbon Fiber and to a light frame. See Terry lifting the front of the frame.

This car is the only 1983 Corvette in the world. I understand they made like 47 of them, but they had a issue of catching on fire, so they recalled everyone and had them destroyed by an independent car crusher. But when he got down to the last one, it started raining and since he just bought new boots, he decided to destroy that one the next day; to save his boots. When he showed up the next day, the car crusher machine was gone. So that he didn't get in trouble, He put the car on the side of the building and covered it up. Later (I am thinking years later, someone found the car and said this was to be destroyed! So they gave it to the museum.


They also had a car that had over 720,000 miles on it. I guess you can be proud of that.


The next several pictures are about the Sinkhole that ate up 8 new corvettes, to include the one millionth one. When they finished that car, everyone that worked on it, signed their name to the inside of the hood. After the sinkhole, they rebuilt it but couldn't recover the hood so they had everyone sign it again. They ended up rebuilding 3 of the 8. I guess the others were too badly damaged. Also here is a picture of the sinkhole outline and a look into the cavern itself.







So what do you think of this type of page? Let me know. Doesn't mean you will get this all the time though...but maybe. Remember this is just some of the pictures I took.  Click here to see the rest.