Chevrolet Finishes Work on 1,000,000th Corvette And It's Pretty Rad
Chevrolet finished work restoring its 1,000,000th Corvette after it was damaged in a Kentucky sinkhole that swallowed it — and other Corvettes — at the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky, the automaker announced.
The celebratory 1992 Corvette had signatures on every part from auto workers at its Bowling Green, Kentucky plant. The restoration project included getting those signatures on refurbished parts, and on the two parts that couldn’t be saved, scanning and replicating the signatures.
The entire process took more than four months, and more than 1,200 man-hours to complete, according to Chevrolet. That works out to about two full-time employees working 40 hours a week, but it’s still very cool.
The details get better.
According to the automaker, several of the car’s interior pieces, including its headrests, needed significant work to be restored and were re-dyed to match.
The 1,000,000th banner across its windshield was re-printed using the original file from the first banner.
Other details:
- Its wheels were damaged but refurbished and replaced with original Goodyear Eagle GS-C tires.
- Its scuffed and scratched instrument panel wasn’t replaced, but refurbished to preserve signatures underneath it.
- It’s chassis and powertrain were relatively unscathed from the attack by the earth.
Chevrolet didn’t provide an estimate for the total cost of restoration, or the value of the new car.
It also didn’t provide details about whether the process was documented because that would be instantly more interesting than anything currently running on the History Channel.
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No GM fanboi either, but it was gut-wrenching to see these 'Vettes in this kind of shape! No surprise the "Blue Devil" ended up new with little work -- it looked about the best of them. I wonder if they took a crack at any of the pace cars (or a split-window '63 that I thought had gone into the hole)? BTW, I think that red Firebird in the background is a one-off with a Ferrari engine under the hood for..Bill Mitchell, I believe. (Don't know where I found that, but I remember those wire wheels.)
This is cool to see. The C4 gets so much hate and it's not deserved. They're fun to drive and fun to beat on. I think we're all too automotively spoiled these days.