National Corvette Museum - Bowling Green, KY

A good friend of mine, "Coupe" Underwood, once told me years ago when I began to travel for a living, "Always take a camera with you.  You never know what kind of stuff you're going to run across."  So, I normally take a camera with me.  And I did on my trip to Bowling Green, KY earlier this fall.  But on this trip, I didn't heed my own rule - make sure the battery is charged before you take the camera with you!  I found that out during my visit to the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green.

Actually, I wasn't planning on seeing much in Bowling Green.  I had a potential new dealer who was interested in our speaker line, so I went down there for a meeting.  But when I came up Exit 28 to Bowling Green on Interstate 65, I was surprised to see the National Corvette Museum (see map).  The museum is literally across the road from the plant where Chevrolet Corvettes are made.  The museum is a mecca for Corvette owners of all ages.

Now, there's an old joke - What's the difference between a porcupine and Corvette owners?  The pricks are on the outside on a porcupine.  But I've always thought Corvettes are neat.  It goes back to the early 60's when my dad would test drive a new Corvette for a day and he'd take my older brother and me along with him.  He had a friend, Jack Bailey, who ran a Chevy dealership in Newton, IA who'd let him take one out for a drive.  We'd always go around to the small towns in the area, but he'd open it up in between.  This was before the interstate was finished so we REALLY couldn't see how fast one of those could go.  I was, maybe, 4 to 7 or 8 when we used to do it.  My mother would have crapped on the spot if we told her we were hitting 110 on the straight-aways along some back road blacktop. 

I had some time to kill before I went to see my potential dealer.  I parked my car and grabbed my camera from the trunk.  I began to take pictures of the outside of the building.  Suddenly, my battery indicator light began to blink 'red'.  I thought, "Son of a BITCH!!"  For a moment, I thought I'd go back out to the car, get the charger and let it charge up for about 15 minutes in the museum.  But I thought I could get enough pictures out of it before the battery would let go. 

In hindsight, I should have taken in the charger and plugged it in at the front desk and wandered around in the Corvette Store gift shop waiting for it to get a better charge.  It turned out there was a lot to see at the National Corvette Museum. 

The building itself is 68,000 square feet.  They have over 75 Corvettes on display as well as engineering and design displays, motor displays and pictures of everything from cars to the men who designed the cars over the years.  As I was there, they were in the midst of building a 47,000 sq. ft. addition that was scheduled to be done on Labor Day of 2009. 

It cost about eight bucks to get in and the museum is open 360 days a year from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.  The first part of the museum that you enter is the atrium area where they have a number of Corvettes lined up.  Many of these Corvettes were either on loan or gifted to the non-profit museum.  They had Corvettes on display in the atrium from the 1950's up to this decade.  All were in mint shape and had to worth thousands and thousands of dollars.

The first Corvettes were built in Flint, MI and the body was made out of fiberglass - very revolutionary in it's day - mainly because of a lack of steel 7 years after the end of World War II.  This is a 1953 Corvette.  This was one of the first Corvettes ever produced.  Each car had a story board beside it, telling its history and how it made it to the Corvette Museum.  On the walls in the atrium area were a number of pictures of Corvettes and their owners.  There were also kiosks that showed videos of Corvettes in action over the years. 

From the atrium, you could go into the Chevrolet Theater which was playing a film on the history of the Corvette, or you could go into the Nostalgia part of the museum.  I skipped the film and went through the museum.  There, they had displays of old Corvettes from the 50's in a diorama.  This is a 57 Corvette sitting in what was an old Mobil gas station.  I think the price on the pumps was 29 cents for Ethyl (high octane).  

Here is, I believe, a 1955 Corvette.  A friend of our family, Howard Pelzer, had one exactly like this back in the 70's.  He used to drive it in parades.  One time at my aunt and uncle's house, he had the Corvette parked in the front yard.  His grandkids were playing in the car and, somehow, the emergency brake was disengaged and the car rolled down a short embankment.  It got hung up on a concrete retaining wall and broke the fiberglass along the bottom of the passenger side door.  Now, I would have been kicking those kids asses from here to Mars, but Howard was rather laid back about the incident.  "Aw, that's what insurance is for," Howard said,  But, then again, I think he'd had about 8 drinks in him by that time. 

The next part of the museum was the Performance area where they showed concept and proto-type Corvettes that Chevrolet worked on over the years.  This was a pretty neat area of the museum.  This area also included a number of displays on the men who designed the Corvette over the years, including Harley Earl, widely regarded as the "Father of the Corvette."  I wish I would have been able to get more photos of this area.   

From the Performance area, it was on to the Corvette Museum Skydome.  This housed a number of Corvette performance and race cars, including a number of Indianapolis 500 pace cars that were used during a number of races.  This is the last picture I was able to get before my battery went dead.  I just wandered around after that looking at all they had on display. 

Before I left, I went through the Corvette Store shop.  Actually, the exit from the museum takes you right through the gift shop.  So they try to get you one last time before you leave.  You can visit the gift shop without having to pay admission to the museum.

I think I spent about a half-hour in the National Corvette Museum, not as much time as I'd liked.  But it turns out that I put the dealer on in Bowling Green and I will be going back at least a couple times a year.  With the new part of the museum to open in September, almost doubling its size, I'll probably wait to go back to the museum next fall.  But this time I will make sure that my camera battery is fully charged.  I have a feeling that I'm going to get a lot of good pictures on my return visit. 

 

 

 

Comments

[Larry Pelzer]

I was just doing a little research on my grandfather, Howard Pelzer, and the picture of the Corvette above is one of the first things I found! I have a picture of him "flexing his biceps" in front of his Corvette at the Cline Tool pool... and I remember the story you told, it was my sister and cousin that accidentally wrecked his car - he must of told that story a thousand times! Love your blog, this is the first time I have ran across it.

[Erwin Calverley]

Haha, yeah yeah, it always pays to be prepared with a ready camera. That museum seems pretty cool. There's a ton of cars there and, alongside them, there's quite a bit of history to digest.