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Bowling Green Corvette Assembly Plant Tour Visitor Info & Review

Welcome to the home of the Chevy Corvette!

If you’re travelling through southern Kentucky and are looking for a unique experience, check out the Chevrolet Corvette Assembly Plant Tour in Bowling Green, Kentucky. While it’s not the best tour experience in itself, the wonder of seeing a vehicle as iconic and luxurious as the Chevy Corvette being made is worth the hour.

Address:  600 Corvette Drive, Bowling Green, Kentucky 42101

Directions:  Take exit 28 off of I-65. At the first traffic light, turn right and follow the signs back behind the assembly plant (turning left at the traffic light takes you to the Corvette Museum). Bowling Green is an hour north of Nashville and almost two hours south of Louisville.

Parking: There is ample free parking on-site for the Corvette Plant Tour. Follow the signs and park in Lots A or B. Look for the electric charging station and welcome tunnel.

Cost:  The tour costs $7 per person, but is free to GM employees/retirees, active military personnel, and their guests (with ID).

Hours:  Tours are offered most days of the year (apart from some blackout dates listed on the website) at 8:30am, 11:30am, and 2:00pm Central Time.

Reservations: Reservations are mandatory to take the tour; walk-ins are not accepted. Visit the official website to reserve a spot on a public or private tour. You will be required to provide information and pay in advance to reserve your spot.

Rules/Restrictions: Children under seven years of age are not permitted, nor are strollers. Close-toed shoes are mandatory. No electronic devices may be brought on the premises (cell phones and cameras included), nor can purses or other bags.

Handicap Accessible:  Walking assisting devices such as crutches or walkers are not permitted but on-site wheelchairs are available for those who need assistance.

Look for this welcome sign and follow the path to the tour building entrance

Experience: When you first arrive, check in at the podium by the entrance. You’ll be given a tour number and must wait in an adjacent room until your number is called. The waiting room is filled with red chairs and plays Corvette commercials on a loop. Expect to wait around 15-30 minutes and arrive an additional 15 minutes before your scheduled tour time, depending on the size of the crowd.

This walking tour of the Bowling Green Corvette Assembly Plant is a 60-minute stroll through the inner workings of the facility that produces America’s favorite sports car. Two guides will lead you around the factory lines, stopping periodically at alcoves with a microphone and speakers to answer questions.

There’s a small on-site gift shop, but if you’re looking for memorabilia, head across the street to the Corvette Museum for a much better selection. Before you leave, there’s a pull-off picnic area where you can park, eat lunch, and take a picture in front of the welcome sign.

Total experience time: 100 minutes.

The official entrance to the Bowling Green plant–don’t enter this one if you’re taking the tour

Corvette Assembly Plant Tour Review:

The first thing visitors will notice, especially if it’s a crowded day, is that the tour process doesn’t feel like it’s organized to accommodate the number of visitors it receives. The check-in desk doesn’t give directions, the wait time is long, the hallways are narrow, and the waiting area feel thrown together. Visitors will have to ask for directions when they’re given a number, since some attendees won’t explain what to do. This certainly starts the experience on a bad note, but the tour itself makes up for a poor arrival situation.

The walking tour is at a moderate pace, rarely lingering too long or moving too fast. The employees at the plant are nice–including one gentleman who handed signed Hot Wheels toy cars to children in the tour. Seeing the production process is definitely interesting. If members of your group aren’t as car-savvy as you, try this game: see if you can spot all the colors for the current model year being assembled in the plant. We saw all but two.

Unfortunately, you should already have a decent familiarity with the assembly process since the Q&A format doesn’t allow the guide to talk much about the entire assembly process. Most of the time you can’t hear anything being said and are just observing the production as it’s happening. But that’s acceptable–the reason you’re here is to watch attractive cars being made.

Give yourself plenty of time to arrive when you visit and make reservations in advance. Then enjoy your experience seeing Corvettes being built!

You’ll be reminded multiple times to leave certain items in your car–read the signs!

Aaron is unashamed to be a native Clevelander and the proud driver of a Hyundai Veloster Turbo (which recently replaced his 1995 Saturn SC-2). He gleefully utilizes his background in theater, literature, and communication to dramatically recite his own articles to nearby youth. Mr. Widmar happily resides in Dayton, Ohio with his magnificent wife, Vicki, but is often on the road with her exploring new destinations. Aaron has high aspirations for his writing career but often gets distracted pondering the profound nature of the human condition and forgets what he was writing… See more articles by Aaron.

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Corvette Assembly Plant to Resume Plant Tours Beginning November 2nd

RELATED ARTICLES MORE FROM AUTHOR

Acs composite is now shipping its new rock guards for the c8 corvette z06 and e-ray, the c8 corvette has become america’s favorite convertible, here’s why every c8 corvette coupe owner needs a set of these c8 dry bay vent blocks.

That’s great news, so many have missed seeing and enjoying a marvelous experience. I was in the plant 4/25-4/28 2017 building my LT4 engine and watching my Z06 being assembled. I didn’t realize it closed so soon after I was there.

Its about time, I got my R8C in late 2018 and couldn’t go see the car built or anything because of this.

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WATCH A SUPERCAR GET BORN: CORVETTE PLANT TOURS HAVE RETURNED

You’ll finally be able to witness a 2023 corvette z06 made in the flesh.

In recent years, the General Motors Bowling Green Assembly plant has seen its fair share of curveballs. The factory and its personnel – whom exclusively produce the C8 Corvette – have endured a pandemic, layout changes and enhancements, union disputes, and not to mention the tornadoes and fires it dealt with just last year. And to think that this place used to have accommodation for a visitor’s tour. Well, if you’ve been patiently waiting for the National Corvette Museum to bring back in-person factory tours, that time has finally arrived.

You can now purchase and schedule a Bowling Green Assembly Plant in-person tour through the end of January 2023. The assembly plant has been home for making all of GM’s Corvettes since it opened in 1981. It has since produced well over 1-million Corvettes. Currently, the factory produces both the C8 Corvette Stingray and 2023 Z06 .

The Fine Print

Per usual, however, there is some fine print. Per NCM’s website , museum members will be given first crack at buying and scheduling a tour. Members will also be given a one week head start over the rest of us which have to wait until November 1, when purchasing and scheduling tours goes public. There are blackout dates in which you will not be able to visit however and those include; November 8-18, November 24-25, December 5-9, December 26 – January 2.

In addition, you’re not allowed to bring cameras, bags, or open toe shoes (duh) inside the factory building. There are no refunds or discounts given at this time and there is no certainty to whether or not the plant will be in “normal production” during your visit. Nevertheless, a tour guide will take you through the full assembly process. A process that can include building your own Corvette Z06 engine , or taking delivery of your new 2023 Stingray at the nearby National Corvette Museum . Both of those options were considered add-ons when making a purchase.

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Written by Cody U.

Cody is a Tennessee-based media professional with a degree in Journalism and Electronic Media. He has spent time as a country radio morning show producer and currently writes for MC&T as an outlet to geek out over cool cars, trucks, and utility vehicles.

Originally from California Cody has an appreciation for all-electric vehicles but a soft spot for the rumble of an all-American V8 muscle car. His dream car remains a 2007 Ford Mustang Bullitt. His fascination with all things cars stems from countless trips to car shows and watching car movies, of course.

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450 Horses Under the Hood – Corvette Plant & Museum, Kentucky

Few cars are more iconic than the Corvette. We visited the assembly plant and National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky to see why.

General Motors premiered the original Corvette (pictured above) in 1953. Only 300 of them were ever made and they were all white and sold for a base price of $3,498. One of these originals just sold at auction for $445,500.

One of the most enduring and iconic cars ever produced in the United States debuted in 1953 at the awesomely-named  General Motors Motorama . It soon became the car of choice for the likes of James Dean and Karen’s dad. Our tribute takes you inside the Corvette Assembly Plant and National Corvette Museum both in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Putting the body on the drive train inside the Corvette factory in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

How to make a Corvette (don’t forget the mutilation prevention kit)

We expected the tour of the Corvette assembly plant to be mired in all kinds of dull safety-first rules and regulations, but apart from the “mutilation prevention kit” that we were handed prior to take off (this turns out to be pieces of fabric that covers your watch, rings, etc and they’re meant to prevent mutilation of the cars , not of you ), the tour (US$7) took us shockingly close to the action. Nothing was behind glass, the workers weren’t swathed in hazmat suits, various work stations had radios playing classic rock. It felt like a club full of friends who occasionally get together to build cars.

A few thousand horses stacked up in engines waiting to be put into brand new Corvettes.

Okay, there are a few rules at the 1 million square foot (10,763,910 square meter) plant where every Corvette has been made since 1981. You have to wear closed toe shoes (NO sandals) and you can’t bring in cameras, backpacks, purses, fanny packs. or electronic devices including cell phones, camera phones, or walkie-talkies.

Doors on the assembly line inside the Corvette factory in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Eric was allowed to bring his camera into the plant where we saw (and photographed) everything from neatly stacked rows of exhaust systems to workers checking every inch of paint under special, super-bright lights to the monsoon room where every car is bombarded with water to make sure all the seals are properly sealed to the lady who gets to carefully put the Corvette logo on the hoods.

Body assembly workers doing their thing at the Corvette factory in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Every Corvette is made to order and a surprising amount of the work appears to be done by hand (no robots in sight), which is part of the reason why, we were told, it takes 32 hours to make just one car. For the truly obsessed, Chevrolet has a program that gives new Corvette buyers a VIP tour of the factory during which they get to watch their car in the final stages of being built.

They may not be strictly hand made anymore but a lot of human touch goes into crafting every Corvette.

It’s a Corvette Merry-go-Round as finished cars move through the assembly facility.

We wanted her job! This lady puts the Corvette insignia onto finished vehicles.

A new Corvette being put through its paces during dynamo testing.

Bright lights and plenty of mirrors aid in the final inspection of the paint and finish of a Corvette.

New Corvettes waiting for their new owners at the Corvette factory in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Don’t touch the Corvettes

If you’re a true Corvette lover (or happen to be the daughter of one), your next stop needs to be the National Corvette Museum  ($10 adults, $8 seniors, $5 under 16) just down the road from the factory. This is where you can see around 70 vintage Corvettes—most of them owned by General Motors. The rest are loaned from private owners or owned by the museum. Here’s what we saw inside.

Vintage ‘vettes lined up in front of the National Corvette Museum next to the assembly plant in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Checkered flag paint marks the Corvettes-Only parking area at the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

A 1959 Corvette pulls up to a 1959 gas station in one of the displays inside the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

A little red Corvette in front of the National Corvette Museum.

If you’re really lucky you can even pick up your Corvette here as dozens do each month. We settled on a visit to the gift shop where you can pick up less pricey pieces of Corvette-ness like coffee mugs covered in Corvette logos, race car red nail polish, even cookies (and cookie cutters) in the shape of a Corvette.

Corvette plant and museum travel tip

Corvette Assembly Plant are temporarily unavailable. Check the plant’s website to see when it will re-open to the public.

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This looks like a really interesting tour. I’ve never been in a car factory before, even cooler that it’s for Corvettes!

Great blog! This is very interesting :)

That’s so cool

[…] Corvette Assembly Plant Tour Corvette Museum Kentucky – Trans-Americas Journey — Read on trans-americas.com/corvette-factory-tour/amp/ […]

Assembly plant is closed to the public until further notice but the museum is very cool and interesting.

Thanks for the update, Carl!

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• Corvette News

National Corvette Museum restarting factory tours

It recommends getting tickets before arriving at the museum.

Since 2017, one of the highlights of the National Corvette Museum, the Corvette assembly plant tours, have been on hiatus. The tours stopped initially while GM made updates to the factory in preparation for the C8 Chevy Corvette . But that hiatus extended with the coronavirus pandemic. But the hiatus is just about at an end, with tours expected to start again by the end of the year.

Museum members will be able to buy tickets for tours starting on October 25, and ticket sales for regular visitors will begin on November 1. Exact dates and times for the tours will be made upon purchase. Member tours will get priority, but tours even for regular visitors will probably be set by the end of this year.

The National Corvette Museum will sell tickets for tours online as well as at the museum. However, the museum recommends visitors buy tickets in advance, since they can't guarantee getting on a tour the same day as purchase. So if you don't want to have to come back another day, purchase early.

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Here's Your Chance to Own an Incredibly Rare Corvette Factory Race Car

The 7.0-liter v-8 engine in the c5-r makes 610 horsepower and 570 pound-feet of torque..

D on't have time to build a race car? Expedite the process by buying this Chevrolet Corvette C5-R GT1 . It won’t be any cheaper, but it will get your butt in a dedicated, factory-built race car that’s ready to hit the track right now just in time for racing season.

This example, chassis no. 7 of 11 built, was built in 2002, several years after engineers increased the car’s engine size from 6.0 to 7.0 liters. The car made 610 horsepower and 570 pound-feet of torque in its expanded form, but this specific one never saw an official factory race. It was built as a spare before being sold to SRT, where it competed in the Belcar, GT FFSA, and FIA GT series.

Katech supplied the engines for the Pratt and Miller-built racer, which paired with a six-speed manual, five-speed manual, or six-speed sequential transmission. It was built from 1999 to 2004.

The C5-R won 31 of the 55 races it competed in by 2004, battling for victories in the GT, GTS/GT1, and GTO series. It won iconic races like the 24 Hours of Daytona, the 12 Hours of Sebring, and the 24 Hours of Le Mans before being replaced by the CR.6 in 2005.

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2 wives, 2 murder charges: Convicted killer’s case dropped after judge tosses evidence from slaying kept hidden for years

After Fran Smith vanished in 1991, her husband’s dark secrets began to unravel. 

In the three decades since, John Smith, 73, was convicted of killing his first wife in Ohio years earlier, in a murder authorities weren’t even aware of until they began investigating Fran’s disappearance . 

Fran’s body has never been found, but prosecutors in New Jersey charged her husband in her death five years ago. Then the case took an unusual turn: Those same prosecutors dropped the murder charge against Smith in exchange for information her family and the FBI agent who spent years investigating the cases said is unreliable and likely untrue.

In this first interview about the deal, retired FBI special agent Robert Hilland called out prosecutors for the arrangement.

“This was a failure on the part of the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office,” Hilland told “Dateline.”

“They hung our family out to dry,” said Sherrie Davis, Fran’s sister.

The prosecutor’s office defended the decision to dismiss the charge, with a spokesperson saying in a statement that because a judge blocked prosecutors from introducing key evidence, what remained would have allowed them to “paint Smith as a bad husband but not a murderer.”

The spokesperson added that Fran’s family was informed of the likely dismissal and agreement before the charge was dropped on July 6, 2023.

“They acknowledged their understanding of how we were proceeding and, although disappointed in the outcome, did not express any criticism at that time,” the spokesperson said.

A spokesperson for the public defender’s office that negotiated the agreement for Smith would not comment.

‘Yes, I lied’

Fran, 49, disappeared on Sept. 28, 1991. The paralegal had recently moved from Florida to a condo in West Windsor, New Jersey, with her new husband, John Smith, and was recovering from a broken hip, her daughter, Deanna Childers, told “Dateline.” 

Smith, an engineer, told authorities that his wife abruptly left to visit relatives, according to a West Windsor detective who investigated the case, Mike Dansbury. Her family said they hadn’t heard from her, however, and while relatives tried to piece together what happened, a detective revealed something Fran’s family hadn’t previously known: Smith had been married before. 

Decades earlier, he’d eloped with Janice Elaine Hartman after high school, another detective, Dave Mansue, told “Dateline.” But the couple split in 1974, after only a few years.

After tracking down a relative of Hartman’s, the family learned an even more startling detail: Days after they divorced, Hartman disappeared and was never heard from again. Authorities in Ohio believed she was a runaway and didn’t pursue the case as a possible homicide, Mansue said.

Smith offered strangely similar accounts and details in the disappearances of both wives, the detectives found. In a missing person’s report, Smith said he believed Hartman had gone to Florida with a red suitcase, Dansbury said. In Fran’s disappearance, he said he believed she’d gone to Florida to visit family with a yellow suitcase, Dansbury recalled. 

When Fran disappeared, authorities discovered that Smith had a long-time girlfriend — an HR manager he’d met while applying for a job — living at a Connecticut beach house he owned. Frank Barre, a detective with the Milford Police Department who began assisting in the investigation, recalled that the girlfriend didn’t know that Smith had been married twice. Nor did she know that both women had disappeared.

“Her whole world was upside down,” Barre told “Dateline.”

The girlfriend agreed to call Smith and allow investigators to listen in and record the conversation.

She confronted him about his relationship with Fran, according to audio of the call, and asked if she was dead. Smith told her he didn’t think so but — because he didn’t know where she was — “they think I must have hurt her,” according to audio.

When she asked about Hartman, he said they’d divorced and he’d reported her missing. He said he’d only just learned that she’d never been found, according to the audio.

When she asked if he’d lied during a police polygraph test, he said: “I failed it.”

“Wait, John,” she said. “Did you lie during the test?”

“Yes, I lied during the test,” he said.

A long-held secret revealed

Investigators suspected that Smith was responsible for the disappearances of his wives, but didn’t have proof. It wasn’t until years later, after Hilland took over the investigations in 1998, that authorities got a break.

By then, Smith had moved to suburban San Diego, remarried and was working for a car maker. On May 5, 1999, Hilland organized an effort with FBI agents across the country to carry out a series of coordinated interviews with people linked to Smith — relatives, colleagues and exes — and with Smith himself.

During an hourslong interview with Smith, Hilland said he repeatedly confronted him about inconsistencies in his accounts of what happened to Fran and Hartman. When the agent confronted him about lying on the polygraph, Smith denied making the comment, Hilland said.

“I pulled out the tape recorder, hit play, and John could hear in his own voice all those things that he had said,” Hilland said about playing the taped conversation between Smith and his onetime girlfriend. Smith “turned beet red and shrugged his shoulders.”

At one point, Hilland said, Smith offered a hypothetical about two people having an argument and one of them being fatally struck by a bus. 

Smith asked, “Is the other person responsible for a murder?” Hilland said. “We said, ‘No, that’s an accident. That would not be a murder. Is that what happened to Fran?’ He said, ‘I don’t know what happened to Fran. I just know she isn’t dead. If she’s dead, she’s probably in heaven.”

Smith told investigators he was having a heart attack, and the interview ended, Hilland said. But days later, the former investigator said, Smith’s brother shared something with t he FBI that he hadn’t previously disclosed.

In exchange for an agreement that barred prosecutors from charging him, the sibling revealed that in November 1974 he’d seen Smith with a large plywood box in a garage next to his grandparents’ house in Ohio. 

Smith was crying, Hilland recalled the brother saying, and appeared to be placing clothes that he believed belonged to Hartman in the box.

The box, which had been nailed shut, remained in the garage for five years, until his grandfather pried it open, Smith’s brother told investigators. The brother said he saw what appeared to be Hartman’s remains inside the box, Hilland said. 

Her legs had been removed and her hair appeared to be rainbow-colored — a detail authorities later attributed to clothing dye bleeding onto her body, Hilland said.

The discovery haunted the sibling for years, Hilland recalled, but he hadn’t come forward because his grandfather had asked him to stay silent.

“The grandfather said, ‘If we call the sheriff, this is gonna cause your grandmother to die,’” Hilland recalled the sibling saying.

After the brother called Smith and told him he’d found the box, Smith arrived at the grandparents’ home, put the box in the passenger seat of his Corvette and drove off, Hilland said the brother told officials.

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After his revelation to the FBI, Smith’s brother agreed to confront his sibling. In the conversation, which was recorded, Smith described the box as a “joke” and said someone had dropped it off with a dead goat inside, according to a transcript of the call.

At one point, the brother said: “I had nightmares where Jan chased me down the road, beat me with her legs, John.” 

“OK,” Smith replied.

Nearly a year later, remains were exhumed from a rural Indiana cemetery and, in April 2000, positively identified as belonging to Hartman. 

Years earlier, it turned out, a road crew had found the box described by Smith’s sibling in a roadside drainage ditch, but the remains couldn’t be identified and the body was buried in what Hilland described as a Jane Doe grave.

Six months after the identification, Smith was charged with murder in Hartman’s killing. He pleaded not guilty and was convicted at trial. In 2001, Smith was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.

The case falls apart

After that conviction, Hilland continued searching for Fran. He said he organized multiple excavations at Smith’s workplace in New Jersey and the Connecticut beach home, and he worked with undercover informants at the prison where Smith was incarcerated to try and gather information. Neither efforts yielded evidence, he said.

Prosecutors from Mercer County later met with Hilland at the FBI Training Academy in Virginia, where he was working as an instructor. Although there was no new evidence, the prosecutor’s office said in its statement, after the meeting, they believed they had enough to charge Smith in Fran’s 1991 disappearance.

In November 2019, Smith was indicted on a charge of first-degree murder after prosecutors presented evidence to a grand jury about both Fran’s disappearance and Hartman’s killing.

“It was the state’s position that, in 1991, Smith believed he had a successful blueprint to get away with murder and followed his 1974 playbook but corrected the only mistake he made in the murder of Janice Hartman — keeping her body in a place where it would be accidentally discovered,” the prosecutor’s office said.

But in 2022, the statement said, a judge barred prosecutors from presenting evidence from Hartman’s murder, ruling that it would unfairly prejudice the jury. Faced with the impending dismissal of charges, the statement said, prosecutors entered into an agreement with Smith.

Because Fran’s body had never been found, the statement said, the likelihood of uncovering new evidence and pursuing a successful prosecution appeared “minimal.” To provide closure for the family, the statement said, prosecutors agreed to drop the murder charge if he revealed what he did with Fran’s remains.

The prosecutor’s office didn’t require corroborating evidence to back up the account — “recovery” would have been impossible given how long ago she disappeared, the statement said — nor did they require Smith to say how he killed her. 

“In negotiating the non-prosecution agreement, Smith would not admit to the murder but would agree to tell us what he did with her body,” the spokesperson said in an email.

Prosecutors shared what Smith said with Fran’s family but didn’t reveal the details publicly, according to the statement. Deanna Childers, Fran’s daughter, told “Dateline” that officials told the family that Smith confessed to wrapping her mother’s body in a blanket and leaving her in a dumpster at the factory where he worked in New Jersey.

Davis, Fran Smith’s sister, said the idea that the deal provided closure for her family was an insult. She didn’t believe Smith’s account, she said, adding that the information did “nothing” for her family.

Hilland, who retired from the FBI in 2022, was outraged that the deal didn’t require a full confession or corroborating evidence. He said it seemed highly unlikely that Smith would have left Fran’s body in a trash bin at a factory with many employees who easily could have noticed. 

To Hilland, there was so much circumstantial evidence implicating Smith in Fran’s alleged killing — including when he told his then-girlfriend in the recorded call that he lied to police while they were questioning him about Fran’s disappearance — that he believed prosecutors could have proven his guilt. 

“Shame on them for accepting” his account, Hilland said, “because now they’ve given him immunity based on that.”

Hilland added that when John Smith goes for his next parole hearing in 2029, he may have a better chance of getting out because he can say he cooperated with authorities.

Tim Stelloh is a breaking news reporter for NBC News Digital.