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, as the last car to be unearthed, a 2001 Corvette Z06 with a Mallett Hammer conversion, was pulled from the ground on April 9.
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 of effort to dig free. The 1984 PPG Pace car, the fifth car pulled free, 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 it 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. Kevin Helmintoller, who’d donated the car to the museum with his wife Linda, was on site for the Mallett Hammer’s recovery, and upon seeing his former Corvette remarked, “I expected bad, but it’s 100 times worse. It looks like a piece of tin foil, and it had a roll cage in it!” 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 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. For more information on the cars or their status, visit CorvetteMuseum.org.
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