The National Corvette Museum
Corvette fans look over the new 2006 Z06 Corvette during its roll out for Corvette fans and the general public. Corvette fans look over the new 2006 Z06 Corvette during its roll out for Corvette fans and the general public during the 2005 C5/C6 Corvette Bash at The National Corvette Museum and Manufacturing plant in Bowling Green, Kentucky, April 22, 2005. Reuters/John Sommers II

A sinkhole opened up under the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Ky., and swallowed eight prized cars on Wednesday, museum officials reportedly said.

The incident happened early in the morning when there were no visitors at the museum, so there were no injuries. According to reports, the sinkhole was 40-feet-wide and 30-feet-deep.

Katie Frassinelli, a spokesperson for the museum reportedly said that a motion detector alerted the security that there was something wrong. An employee who had first seen the sinkhole “was on shock all day,” she said.

"When you go in there, it's unreal," Frassinelli said. "The hole is so big, it makes the Corvettes look like little Matchbox cars."

Of the eight vehicles that fell into the sinkhole, two cars -- a 2009 Chevrolet Corvette C6 ZR1, nicknamed “Blue Devil” and a 1993 ZR-1 Spyder -- were on loan to the museum from General Motors (NYSE:GM). GM's Bowling Green assembly plant is about half a mile away from the museum.

“We’re just tickled that no one was hurt; that thing was deep,” Greg Wallace, manager of the General Motors Heritage Center in Sterling Heights, Mich., said in a telephone interview to The New York Times. “We really don’t know yet what the value of the cars is, but we’ll fix them up and you’ll never know they were damaged.”

According to reports, the other six cars that were damaged include a black 1962 Corvette, a 1984 custom pace car from the IndyCar World Series, the one-millionth Corvette made as well as the 1.5-millionth Corvette, a 1993 Ruby Red 40th anniversary Corvette, and a 2001 Mallett Hammer Z06 Corvette.

Wendell Strode, executive director of the museum, reportedly said that insurance would cover the damages to the cars as well as the structure. Museum officials said that the damaged portion of the museum may be closed indefinitely but the rest of the facilities will remain open as usual.

Check out the security camera footage from the museum here:

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