The folks at Chevrolet have finished fully restoring the one-millionth Corvette ever made, which was heavily damaged in a sinkhole with seven other cars at the National Corvette Museum last year.
The restoration of the white 1992 Chevrolet Corvette convertible took 1,200 hours to complete, and was unveiled today at the Bowling Green, Kentucky, facility.
'We felt it was important to restore this extremely significant car in Corvette’s long, storied history,' said Mark Reuss, GM executive vice president, Global Product Development, Purchasing and Supply Chain, in a press release. 'When we disassembled it, we found that each employee involved in building it had signed a part of the car, which was fantastic and moving to see. It brought the history to life, and reinforced the importance of the project.'
The team working on the restoration wanted to keep as many of the original parts as possible to help keep those signatures intact and keep the car historically accurate, so instead of sourcing new parts, they tried to repair and preserve the damaged parts. Only two signed panels couldn’t be revived, but the team had the signatures scanned and printed on the replacement parts.
One signature was so damaged that it couldn’t be scanned, so the team hunted down the assembly line worker from 1992 to get her signature again.
Luckily, the 5.7L LT1 engine, transmission and other drivetrain components weren’t damaged in the sinkhole.
This 1992 model is the second sinkhole car restored. Of the eight cars that fell victim to the sinkhole, three will be fully restored, while the remaining five will be preserved in their damaged state as part of an exhibit about the sinkhole disaster. The next and last car to be restored will be a 1962 Corvette.
Visit GM’s press site to play with some
cool before and after photos.