A Tour Of The National Corvette Museum

First and foremost, I’m a German sports car guy.  I’ve owned a Porsche 944 back in college.  I’ve been driving a BMW 3 Series for the last decade – both my wife and I each have one.  I’ve had the opportunity to tour the car museums of BMW, Mercedes, and Porsche in Germany.  But I had never gotten around to visiting the National Corvette Museum (right here in the good old US of A) until a recent dog show we competed in brought us close by.  The National Corvette Museum is located in Bowling Green, Kentucky, off Interstate 65’s Exit 28. It was constructed in 1994, and opened to the public in September of that year.

The museum is located only a quarter mile from the Bowling Green Corvette Assembly Plant, where Corvettes have been made since 1981 (when it moved from St. Louis). Public tours of the assembly plant are available. In addition, Chevrolet allows Corvette buyers to take delivery of their new vehicles at the museum, with a VIP tour of the plant and museum.  This is similar in concept to the BMW European Delivery program which I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing.

The National Corvette Museum differs from other car museums in that it is dedicated to just one car model – the Corvette.  The museum itself is absolutely first rate – as nice as any of the German car museums I’ve visited.  The emphasis of the museum is clearly the heritage of the of the car, with lots of displays of vintage models:

The damage the museum took last year due to a sink hole made national news.  So we were anxious to visit the Skydome area and see for ourselves.  In this photo, tape on the floor marks where the sink hole formed:

Several models fell into the VERY deep hole, and are were kept part of the museum’s collection on display:

Here’s an older model in the Skydome that was of interest to me.  My cousin Steve had one of these 1978 limited edition Indianapolis 500 Pace Car replicas that I saw a few times while growing up:

I’ve never been a huge Corvette fan, but I have to admit the newest models are quite visually appealing:

After touring through the museum, we had the obligatory souvenir photos taken:

I wish we could have spent more time than we did, but we had to start our drive back home.  The museum is extremely well done and I’m pleased we had the opportunity and took the time to visit – even my wife enjoyed it!  Long live the Corvette!