2009 Chevrolet Malibu Lt Sedan 4-door 3.6l on 2040-cars

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Chevrolet To Oversee Restoring Sinkhole Corvettes

What Mother Earth devoured, Chevrolet plans to resurrect. The carmaker said Thursday it will oversee restoration of the classic cars swallowed by a huge sinkhole beneath the National Corvette Museum in Kentucky. General Motors Design in Warren, Mich., will manage the painstaking work to repair the eight prize vehicles, the automaker said Thursday. The cars were consumed when the earth opened up early Wednesday beneath a display area when the museum in Bowling Green, Ky., was closed. No injuries were reported. The museum was open Thursday except for the area where the sinkhole occurred. Mark Reuss, GM's head of global product development, said the damaged vehicles rank as "some of the most significant in automotive history." "There can only be one 1-millionth Corvette ever built," he said, referring to one of the damaged cars. "We want to ensure as many of the damaged cars are restored as possible so fans from around the world can enjoy them." Just how the cars will be pulled out of the ground remains to be seen, said museum executive director Wendell Strode. The local fire department estimated the hole is about 40 feet across and 25 to 30 feet deep. The hole opened beneath part of the museum's domed section. "We feel pretty confident that most of the cars can be extracted," Strode said Thursday. "And we hope and believe that with just a little bit of luck, that all eight cars can be extracted and be part of the restoration." Chevrolet spokesman Monte Doran said some of the cars look to be in good shape, while others are buried in rubble. "It will likely be several weeks until we can get the cars out and assessed," he said. The GM Design team has helped restore other historic cars, but the Corvette project looks to be its biggest, he said. "These Corvettes are part of our history, and they want them restored properly," Strode said. "We're thrilled they're doing this." The cars looked like toys as they plunged into the hole, piled in a heap amid dirt and concrete fragments. The museum owns six of the cars while two - a 1993 ZR-1 Spyder and a 2009 ZR1 Blue Devil - are on loan from General Motors. The other cars damaged were a 1962 black Corvette, a 1984 PPG Pace Car, a 1992 White 1 Millionth Corvette, a 1993 Ruby Red 40th Anniversary Corvette, a 2001 Mallett Hammer Z06 Corvette and a 2009 white 1.5 Millionth Corvette. Pictures of the sinkhole showed a collapsed section of floor with multiple cars visible inside the hole.

Chevy Blazer and Easter Jeeps | Autoblog Podcast #576

In this week's Autoblog Podcast, Editor-in-Chief Greg Migliore is joined by Senior Editor, Green, John Beltz Snyder and Assistant Editor Zac Palmer. They do a rundown of the latest news, including rumors of the Toyota Tundra and Tacoma sharing a platform, Jeep's insane Easter Safari concepts and an upcoming "entry level" performance Ford Mustang. Then they talk about driving the new Chevrolet Blazer and Jeep Grand Cherokee Trailhawk, and compare driving the Genesis G70 to the Kia Stinger. Finally, they take to Reddit to spend someone's money on a new crossover. Autoblog Podcast #576 Get The Podcast iTunes – Subscribe to the Autoblog Podcast in iTunes RSS – Add the Autoblog Podcast feed to your RSS aggregator MP3 – Download the MP3 directly Rundown Toyota Tacoma and Tundra to share a platform? Jeep Easter Safari concepts "Entry level" performance Mustang? Cars we're driving: 2019 Chevy Blazer 2019 Jeep Grand Cherokee Trailhawk 2019 Genesis G70 Spend My Money Feedback Email – Podcast@Autoblog.com Review the show on iTunes Related Video:

Three automotive tech trends to watch in 2018 and beyond

Every year, technology plays a bigger and bigger role in the auto industry. To put things in perspective, 10 years ago iPod integration and Bluetooth were cutting-edge in-car innovations, and smartphones and apps weren't yet a thing since the first iPhone was only about six months old. And I can't recall anyone talking about autonomous cars. Compare that to today, with mainstream coverage of the auto industry dominated by autonomous technology, along with electrification and almost every move made by Tesla. These three topics were the most significant trends of car tech in 2017 and I believe they will continue to shape the auto industry in 2018 and beyond. Let's examine them. Full Autonomy Gets Closer to Reality While there were many developments this year that indicate we're inching closer to fully autonomous vehicles, I was behind the wheel for hours to witness one of them. In October I had the chance to test Cadillac Super Cruise on a 700-mile, 11-hour drive from Dallas to Santa Fe – and had my hands on the wheel for maybe 45 minutes max throughout the entire trip. Super Cruise is far from making the Cadillac CT6 or any GM vehicle fully autonomous, and has limitations such as functioning only on pre-mapped main highways. While it simply adds a layer of lane centering to adaptive cruise control, the technology will go a long way in making mainstream drivers more comfortable with letting machines take over. On a separate front, GM is pushing ahead with fully autonomous vehicles and announced last month that it plans to launch of fleets of self-driving robo-taxis in several urban areas in 2019. While most automakers are also in the race to make autonomous cars a reality, GM's turbocharging of its efforts appeared to be in response to Waymo, which announced just weeks earlier that its Early Rider Program in the Phoenix area would go completely driverless. The Early Rider Program launched last April, offering the public a chance to ride in Waymo's autonomous Chrysler Pacifica minivans. In this new phase of testing, Waymo is using its own employees as guinea pigs instead of the public while the vehicles operate without a human behind the wheel, and takes another giant step forward for fully autonomous driving.