Here's What Will Happen to Those Corvettes

The eight Corvettes that got swallowed up by a sinkhole at the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky, on Wednesday will likely be stuck there for weeks, officials say. The area must be stabilized before the historic collector cars can be retrieved; that will take as long as three weeks, and then it could be as many as six more days to actually get the Corvettes out, according to a company tasked with assisting. After that, General Motors will try to restore the cars, Reuters reports, with the task falling to General Motors Design in Warren, Mich.

A Chevrolet spokesperson says some of the cars appear to be in surprisingly good condition, but others are covered with debris, cloaking the true extent of their damage and associated repair costs. A GM rep says the cars involved are "some of the most significant in automotive history," the AP reports. The priciest one? The millionth Corvette ever made, which was never sold and could be worth millions. The damaged cars were insured, but the coverage likely won't fully cover all the restoration costs; GM says it will pick up the rest of the tab. (More sinkhole stories.)