Corvette Museum Bash Notes – Day 1

Apr 27, 2012

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Thursday officially kicked off the 2012 NCM Bash at the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, KY. The crowds were good and with many different activities to attend, it was tough to cover it all. But we tried and so after the jump, take a look at what went on at the Corvette Museum on Day 1 of the NCM Bash.

The day started with fantastic weather and ended with fantastic weather. There was a brief rain shower during the afternoon, but it passed quickly.

The morning started with us taking a walk through the Corvette exhibits to see what has changed since our last visit. One of the first new Corvettes we came across was the actual Velocity Yellow ZR1 that ran the Nurburgring in 7:19.63.

Inside the rotunda, we found a pair of C4 Grand Sports on the main dias while opposite was a Callaway Grand Sport and a C2 Grand Sport. That C2 Grand Sport made us stop in our tracks. I later tweeted a picture of the Corvette and said “I think I’m in love!”

Inside the exhibit hall was a group of 15 Callaway Corvettes in a variety of C4, C5 and C6 generations. Our favorite Callaway Corvette of all time was also in the house, the Callaway Sledgehammer which achived a top speed of 254.76 mph in a top speed run in 1988.

Several seminars were planned for the day. Paul Koerner provided an Ask the Expert seminar for people who were having issues with their Corvettes. Paul is one of the most knowledgeable automotive techs I have ever met and is very serious about his craft. He will be set up in the Museum’s Club Room and will try to answer any techincal questions you have.

Also going on was the Corvette’s Exterior Engineer Kirk Bennion who was working in the Conference Center. Kirk and his guys were applying a variety of stripes and graphics to three different Corvettes. The set included a full length racing stripe on a Red C6, a new set of hash marks on a Supersonic Blue Grand Sport and the ghost Jake graphic went on the hood of an Inferno Orange Grand Sport Convertible.

Callaway’s Chris Chessnoe took over the Chevrolet Theater to bring us a recap on all the great Callaway projects over the years and ended with a great overview of their new RPO B2K 25th Anniversary Grand Sport Callaways.

Later in the day, Lee Willard of Michelin dropped in and gave a talk on the lastest news and products from the tire manufacturer. He later stopped by and signed the wheel of that same Inferno Orange Grand Sport.

Corvette engineer Tom Hill held a seminar called Factory Corvette Care Tips that was also held in the Conference Center. Hill used the 2013 427 Convertible Corvette with the 60th Anniversary Package as his demonstrator and attendees got a bevy of great tips for maintaining their Corvette’s appearance.

The last seminar of the day was held by NCM director Wendell Strode and Corvette Racing’s Doug Fehan and Dan Binks. They brought us up to to date on the latest news regarding the planned NCM Motorsports Park. The project is really moving forward and Strode believes the ground breaking on the $20 million project will happen at the 2013 NCM Bash with the opening of the track coming in 2014. Very exciting stuff!

While we were busy attending the events at the Museum, there were several off-campus activites going on as well. Two tours left the Museum in the morning with one group cruising to the Makers Mark distillery while another group drove up to Cave City for the Winery lunch tour.

The day closed with us joining 60 or so enthusiasts from the Corvette Forum for a dinner at a local restaurant. Its so funny to talk with guys and girls you know on the forum by their creen names and to put the faces together was a lot of fun.

Here are some photos we captured of the day’s events. Stay tuned to CorvetteBlogger and watch our Twitter feed and Facebook page as we are uploading photos and comments throughout the day.