Posted: 09 Apr 2014 01:28 PM PDT

2001 Mallett Hammer Z06 Corvette. Images courtesy National Corvette Museum.

When a sinkhole opened up beneath the National Corvette Museum's Skydome on February 12, the only certain thing was that eight historically significant Corvettes had been lost, potentially forever. Now, less than two months later, all eight have been recovered after the last car to be unearthed, a 2001 Corvette Z06 with a Mallett Hammer conversion, was pulled from the sinkhole Wednesday afternoon.

"It looks like a piece of tin foil, and it had a roll cage in it," said Kevin Helmintoller, who'd donated the Mallett Hammer to the museum with his wife, Linda, and was on site for the car's recovery. From pictures released by the museum, the Mallett Hammer – which was one of the first of the eight Corvettes to fall into the 40-foot-wide and 60-foot-deep sinkhole – appears almost unrecognizable as a car, let alone as a 700-hp, 178 MPH, specially modified Corvette Z06. Helmintoller had donated the car to the museum last December.

In the immediate aftermath of the sinkhole, no one knew if the cars could be safely recovered, or if the Skydome structure itself was stable enough to preserve. Engineering studies revealed that the area around the sinkhole was solid enough to allow the necessary excavation work (along with the restoration of the Skydome), and General Motors announced it would fund the restoration of the buried cars, under the supervision of Ed Welburn, GM's vice president of global design. Two of the first cars to be pulled from the hole, including the 2009 ZR1 "Blue Devil" and the Tuxedo Black 1962 model, emerged in relatively good condition; to emphasize this point, the ZR1 was even driven out of the Skydome under its own power. The second and fourth cars to be retrieved, a 1993 40th Anniversary model and the 1992 Millionth Corvette, sustained more damage, but were still recovered in salvageable condition.

There's a motto among U.S. Navy SEALs that, "The only easy day was yesterday," and the same can be said for the excavation work at the Bowling Green Museum. While the first four Corvettes were retrieved without major effort, every successive car pulled from the hole has required a substantial amount more to dig it free. The 1984 PPG Pace car, the fifth car disinterred, had been crushed by a slab of concrete, which also severed the rear body panels. The rear of the PPG Pace Car was discovered on April 3, and crews originally believed that they had unearthed the similarly colored Mallett Hammer Corvette.

The next cars pulled from the sinkhole weren't retrieved in any better shape. The 1993 ZR1 Spyder, which had been loaned to the museum by General Motors, was crushed nearly flat, with its doors and hood torn free in the collapse. The 1.5 Millionth Corvette, a 2009 convertible, was also badly damaged, its windshield crushed and much of its body work missing. Its recovery left a single car in the ground, and at that point Corvette Museum officials admitted they only had a rough idea of where to begin searching for the Mallett Hammer Corvette.

That car was found on Monday, but it took crews until today to complete the excavation work needed to dig the car free. Like the other "final four" cars saved from the sinkhole, it was in rough shape, crushed to unrecognizable form by tons of earth and concrete. As with the other Corvettes recovered, the plan is still to have General Motors rebuild the car, though with this much damage, it's anyone's guess as to how many original parts can be saved.

The "Great Eight" Corvettes, as the museum is calling them, will remain on display at the National Corvette Museum through August 3, after which they'll be sent to the General Motors Mechanical Assembly facility for the lengthy and complex task of disassembly and restoration. According to Wendell Strode, executive director of the museum, the museum's staff will meet next week with its insurer, engineers, and specialists to determine exactly how to proceed with repairing the sinkhole. For more information on the cars or their status, visit CorvetteMuseum.org.

Great opportunities for Volkswagen | <b>Car Pictures</b> Blog

Posted: 05 Apr 2014 03:19 PM PDT

Posted on April 5, 2014 by carpicturesblog34

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<b>Car Pictures</b> and Auto Show Photos - The Car Connection

Posted: 28 Jul 2008 12:00 AM PDT

2014 Ford Fiesta SE - Driven, March 2014

No matter what you've started to consider in a next new car, there are two things that taking a quick spin in a 2014 Ford Fiesta can make abundantly clear. The first is that small cars don't have to be so soulless and appliance-like. The second? Low-price new cars don't all feel so...cheap. The 2014 Fiesta, for example, has the lowest bottom-line sticker price that this editor has encountered this past year—just $16,845 as...