A gaping hole opened up underneath the floor of the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, KY., taking 8 vintage Corvettes into it's depths. The Museum sits a mere mile from where Corvettes are born; the area is also known for numerous underground caves and springs, making it the perfect breeding ground for massive sinkholes.

National Gegraphic spoke to Chris Groves, a university distinguished professor of hydrogeology at Western Kentucky University, surveyed the site briefly yesterday.

"Caves are a common feature in this part of the state," he says. "And we usually see sinkholes here after a hard rain. But as far as I can tell, what happened in this case was that drainage water has been coming off the museum building improperly for some time. And it focused and built up at one point on the soil.

"When that happens the soil gets washed into voids and pockets in the bedrock—the cave or caves—below ground. That enlarges the voids, and they eventually reach the surface. When there's finally a big enough pocket there, above the bedrock but right beneath the surface, the ground gives way.

The video from Western Kentucky University’s Engineering Department's drone helicopter clearly shows some of those passageways - they hope that the footage will provide more definitive answers as to the exact cause of the ground failure.

The vehicles consumed and damaged by the sinkhole are:

– a 1962 “Black Corvette” – a 1984 PPG pace car – a 2009 ZR1 “Blue Devil” – the 1992 white “1 Millionth Corvette” – a 1993 ruby red “40th Anniversary Corvette” – a 2001 Mallett Hammer Z06 Corvette – the 2009 white “1.5 Millionth Corvette” – a 1993 ZR-1 Spyder


The vehicles look like diecast toys sitting in the hole




Thanks Mike B. for forwarding the drone video!