National Corvette Museum preserving classic Corvette owned by iconic figure in car’s history

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – A new preservation project is underway at the National Corvette Museum, set to showcase the Godfather of Corvette and his legacy.

Zora Arkus-Duntov was originally from Belgium and transformed the Corvette from a sports car to the high-performance cars we see today.

He only ever owned one Corvette, a 1974 model, and to honor his legacy, the team at the National Corvette Museum is currently working on making his car look as good as it ever has.

One staff member that has been hands on in this process says it’s an honor to work on a car that belonged to someone so instrumental to the Corvette’s history.

“This is the only car that he owned. He had many Corvettes, but they were mostly company cars, so to be able to, more or less, preserve Zora’s history with this car and his DNA that he preserved with this car,” Dan Garrett, the vehicle collection supervisor at the Corvette Museum, says.

Garrett and his team are currently working on the car, which is set to be shown in April at the 28th annual Michelin NCM Bash, where items like it that are only available at the Corvette Museum will be seen by collectors.

“Bash is open for registration now. It is from April 24th to 26th of this year. Again, we’ll have this as an artifact pit stop and numerous other artifact pit stops and presentations from the collections team and the exhibitions team, which we’re really excited about sharing,” Robert Maxhimer, director of Curatorial Affairs and Education at the Corvette Museum, says.

To learn more about the Michelin Bash and to register, visit corvettemuseum.org/bash.