So, this olelongrooffan has previously shared with my fellow Hoons that I am now gainfully employed selling cargo and motorcycle trailers as well as car haulers. Yesterday morning, this olelongrooffan climbed into the passenger seat of this big ass truck down in Daytona Beach, Florida to travel to the greater east central Indiana area with my boss to pick up a “stacker” car hauler to drag back to Daytona Beach for eventual placement in the hands of its new owner down near MickeyMouseLand. Last night we made it almost to Bowling Green, Kentucky. We spent the night in such a small Tennessee town that three of the cable channels were derived from street cameras. Yeah, it was exciting. This morning realizing we had a couple hours to spare, we decided
to take a little while and stop by the National Corvette Museum to see what could be seen. We also wanted to tour the Corvette assembly plant but, alas, it was not open for tours today. Now my elcheapo ebay acquired point and shoot doesn’t perform all that well under the covers but I was able to edit out some of the worst shots.
This sweet ole C2 ragtop was right at the entrance to the museum and, of course, it was the first of the grainy images I gathered. Most of the Corvettes on display here are under private ownership and their presence is via donation on a revolving basis.
Every Vette there is in pristine condition and there were several set up in period correct displays.
I did attempt to grab some images of a Corvette parts yard diorama as I am a big fan of dioramas.; The only image that turned out was this one. The reason I took it in the first place was the fact that this just like an old tow truck I built back in the day. I saw an unassembled one on ebay a while back for $55.00 CP.
There were several modified race cars that I am sure contain some provenance but I didn’t really grasp what it was. The boss was a ways off in front of me and although he was being cool about interrupting our travels, I didn’t really want to hold up our trip trying to figure out what significance this purple one possessed. Hell, Tonyola probably knows it off the top of his head.
I did, however, stop off in the ALMS race car room and gather this lone image of a hood hanging above the glassed in display that did not photograph well with my elcheapo flash.
There were a couple other cool race cars plus
this one I remember reading an article that Brock Yates wrote about his trip in it up the Alaskan Highway. I thought of that article immediately upon sighting it. Yes, that’s a Daytona Pace Car in the background.
This C4 race car setup is still a desirable car as I remember it when it raced back in the day.
Calloway had a presence in the main rotunda
along with a C2 Grand Sport and although it was a replica it was pretty nice.
The museum also had a couple concept cars dating from the mid sixties. I can’t even imagine where the Corvette would be today had these mid engine concepts made their way into production. I wonder if I would even have been standing in a Corvette museum today.
Just to the left of that concept display was the last Corvette assembled in St. Louis and the first one assembled at the Bowling Green plant.
I’m not sure how new this Calloway is but I always like stock versions of automobiles and while custom Cobra Mustangs and Saleen Mustangs are nice, the assembly of this collection of the seemingly over the top Calloways was just a bit to much for this olelongrooffan.
See? Does this look anything like a Corvette to my fellow Hoons?
As I was checking out this assembly line point in time and thought of a similar type view I had of the Gipsy assembly line I posted a whiles back. As I am sitting in another notellmotel room in the shadow of a Chrysler LLC component plant and one of the General’s logistics plant here in central Indiana I got to thinking about it again.
That old black and white photo revealed a helluva lot of differences in the assembly of different items in our culture. Yes, it seems the Brits have mastered the ability to construct vehicles that leak oil,
but it seems we Americans instilled that same skill into our architecture.
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