One of the best stops during our last road trip was the National Corvette Museum. For the uninitiated, the Chevrolet Corvette is an American sports car that's been in production since 1953. The museum is in Bowling Green, Kentucky and offers a spacious 115,000 square foot facility located on a 55 acre campus. It opened in 1994, only a quarter mile from the world's only Corvette Assembly Plant where 'Vettes have been made since 1981.
The National Corvette Museum is spacious and contains many dozens of cars spanning the entire history of Corvette production. As you enter, you'll see a nice display of brand new Corvettes literally waiting for their owners to pick them up and drive them home.
The museum does a great job in describing the history of this car. For a half century the Corvette has captured the imagination of American sports car lovers and the history of the car's engineering, design, and engine development are covered in detail. For example, the Corvette really didn't "take off" and the model was actually in trouble until a powerful engine was included a few years into production (hard for me to imagine a "gutless" Corvette).
(This cross sectional view of an early Corvette does a nice job illustrating the design and engineering)
A favorite part of our tour through the museum was the "Nostalgic area", where early model Corvettes are displayed against an idealist small-town main street. I think these early model cars are just beautiful!
Your tour includes numerous examples of how the Corvette's design and engineering changed over the years, all the way through the car's production history to Corvettes which are for sale today.
Lots of unique Corvettes are displayed, like racing car winners and those with unusual designs.
It's impossible in this blog to cover the diversity of displays, but I wanted to highlight a few that caught my eye. Below you'll see two insignias developed for the car. The top one was favored and about to go into production when a corporate attorney killed the design because the US flag can't be used in marketing. The bottom insignia was rolled out when the car was released and is still used to this day.
The mural shown below is made of thousands of smaller photos of Corvettes and their owners, together forming the bigger picture.
A highlight of the Museum is its Skydome and Corvette Hall of Fame, which are located in the tallest portion of the museum. There is also an interesting history associated with the Skydome.
(Skydome and the Hall of Fame)
On February 12, 2014, a sinkhole measuring about 40 feet wide and 30 feet deep opened under the floor of the Skydome at around 5:44 AM, causing a portion of its floor to collapse. Kentucky is well known for its extensive cave system (eg. Mammoth Caves National Park), and the floor collapse was due to a cave collapse under the museum. Fortunately because of the early hour, no people were injured.
Eight rare cars fell into the hole and were severely damaged. These included a 1962 Black Corvette, 1984 PPG Pace Car, 1992 White 1 Millionth Corvette, 1993 Ruby Red 40th Anniversary Corvette, and 2009 White 1.5 Millionth Corvette, The cars were recovered, the structure repaired and braced, and the museum reopened.
Some of the damaged cars were repaired, like the 1,000,000th Corvette shown above, but others remain on display in their damaged state, as you can see in the photos below. One of these photos was used in last weekend's One Clue Mystery -- congratulations to George G for recognizing where we were!
The National Corvette Museum is located off Interstate 65, less than one hour north of Nashville and less than two hours south of Louisville.
We spent about 2 hours at the museum, but it would be easy for a car buff to spend a full day here. A most pleasant immersion into Americana!
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