As a European, I must salute you. The two Corvette C7.Rs were simply amazing at Le Mans. And not just because of those burnouts.The 24 Hours of Le Mans is the greatest race in the world, and while it certainly works without Americans, having a few stars and stripes around always makes it more exciting. Just think of all those GT40s back in the day!The C7.R is no GT40, but Chevy’s newest racer built by Pratt & Miller for the GTE Pro and USCC GT classes. It’s no GT40 because it’s not a prototype and also because they couldn’t beat Ferrari at Le Mans this time: The #73 car finished second behind a 458 Italia while #74 got the fourth place thanks to a rapid 911 RSR.Still, great results from a pair of brand new cars fighting against the best of Europe, especially with Cadillac’s paint from the early 2000s quietly fading away in the background as a constant reminder of previous GM failures at Le Mans.
In less than a week, the 1.5 Millionth Corvette has gone from location unknown to being dug out from the depths of the sinkhole… regaining its status as a display car in the National Corvette Museum on Thursday.
While methods of probing the mounds of dirt in the sinkhole and the use of metal detectors were
unsuccessful in finding the milestone Corvette, it was the retrieval process of the Spyder that yielded signs of the first of the two missing cars. “We had no idea where it was, we just happened upon it,” Mike Murphy, CEO of Scott, Murphy and Daniel Construction said.
Upon the removal of the Spyder, the team began working to free the 1.5 Millionth. Initial attempts to pull the car free were to no avail as a large rock appeared to be wedging the rear of the car in the dirt.
“Originally, we thought we had to remove the boulder itself to free the vehicle,” said Zach Massey, Project Manager with Scott, Murphy and Daniel Construction, “But we were able to free the 1.5 without addressing the boulder as it turned out it was not directly resting on the car, which was a great advantage to us.”
Wednesday afternoon the team was able to successfully free the car, with final removal from the sinkhole taking place Thursday morning. “While the car appears to be in really rough condition, most of the major components are still there and provides a great base to work off of,” said Adam Boca of the NCM Insurance Agency and a member of the Museum’s Display Committee.
The National Corvette Museum was given the opportunity to purchase the milestone car brand new to preserve its place in history. It was built in Bowling Green, KY on May 28, 2009 and is a white convertible with red interior, a small nod to the first 300 Corvettes built in 1953 in Flint, MI – all being white convertibles with red interiors. The 1.5 Millionth is fully loaded with the 3LT Preferred Equipment Group, Z51 Performance Package, Dual Mode Performance Exhaust, Navigation, 6-Speed Automatic Transmission with Paddle Shift and has a 6.2L V8 engine boasting 430 hp.
The final Corvette to be removed is the 2001 Z06 with Mallett Hammer conversion. “The rest of the day will be spent probing and excavating the area to find any signs of the Mallett Hammer,” said Murphy.
I watched part of the day (stupid budget meeting!!! ) as they dug around the 1.5 millionth Corvette.Currently it is lays at the bottom of the of the sink hole.
If you’ve never been to the National Corvette Museum, you should put that on your bucket list. If you are a car gal/guy you’ll love it, even more so, if you own or previously owned a corvette.
Here are my pictures I took of the 1, 500,000th Corvette on one of my trips to the NCM.
Details
One of the best looking Vette paint scheme wise.
Awesome look!!!
I actually thought about getting a decal for my C6 with the number on it!!
Current location of the 1.5 Mil Corvette Sad to see it here.
From what I can see at this time the 1.5 millionth car is being uncovered as it was laying beneath the Spyder. Here is an update from NCM:
“When we started digging around the Black Spyder, we found a piece of white fiberglass underneath it and we continued to expose that until we saw that it was the 1.5 Millionth car,” said Mike Murphy, CEO of Scott, Murphy and Daniel Construction. “We had no idea where it was, we just happened upon it. We hope when we move the white car we find the red car that way, because we’ve just not had any luck detecting where it is.” Murphy indicated that they have utilized metal detectors as well as probing rods, and that they remove layers of dirt as they probe but have not had a lot of luck so far.
On Monday, the team worked to continue removing dirt from around the Spyder, then in the early evening decided to carefully pull the car out of the remaining dirt.
“It was free everywhere except underneath there was a concrete slab wedged. We felt we had it in the best position, just like pulling a gun out of a holster. Everyone felt like it was best to take it so it wouldn’t bend and break if we’d had it exposed more,” Murphy said.
The team resumed recovery efforts early Tuesday morning, removing a large boulder that was lodged in the cabin of the Spyder and collecting bits and pieces of the car to help with any restoration or preservation efforts. The Spyder was removed from the depths of the hole around 9am CT, and is in worse shape than even the PPG Pace Car.
News of a new reality show for aspiring car designers sponsored by Chevrolet got me to thinking – could the next-gen Corvette come out of a reality show?
The new TV series, Motor City Masters, will pit 10 aspiring car designers against one another on truTV testing both their exterior and interior design capabilities.
The 10-episode show, hosted by Brooke Burns, former star of Baywatch and Melrose Place, will be based in Los Angeles with a series finale in Detroit.
Show participants will be judged in areas such as creativity, execution and the forward-thinking in their work. After a series of elimination rounds, the top two designers will face off in front of members of Chevy’s design team.
The first BMW art car — a 1975 3.0 CSL wearing a paint job designed by Alexander Calder — headlined a class of significant cars from the German automaker at the 2014 Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance. It was joined by a BMW M-powered McLaren F1 …
Corvette enthusiasts from around the world have been waiting for the reintroduction of the legendary model since production of the C6 Z06 ended, but the wait will soon be over. If you want to be the owner of the first 2015 Z06 produced, then you need to be at Barrett-Jackson’s second auction of the 2014 season, being held at the South Florida Fairgrounds in West Palm Beach, April 11 – 13. Gary Bennett, Vice President of Consignments, has once again struck a deal with GM to auction off the very first production model of a new Corvette. At this point, the Z06 is scheduled to cross the block on Saturday, April 12.
If, however, you guessed the 2015 Corvette Z06, you are also correct. If you guessed anything else, you’re reading the wrong magazine. Because of the upcoming Z06’s striking similarities to the ZR1, we’ve taken to thinking of the new car as the “ZR06.”.
) as they dug around the 1.5 millionth Corvette.Currently it is lays at the bottom of the of the sink hole.
