In recent years, NASCAR Hall of Fame driver Rusty Wallace has been a regular at the Barrett-Jackson Scottsdale Collector-Car Auction and Saturday night he was there to sell a special 1978 Corvette he customized.

The gleaming black Corvette featured a 450-horsepower Chevrolet engine built and dyno-tuned by Doug Yates, who runs Roush-Yates Engines, the company that builds the powerplants for Ford teams in the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series.

Wallace and Yates are next-door neighbors, and Wallace said the engine was “the star of the car.”

On stage at Barrett-Jackson, Wallace said, “It’s got a ton of power, it runs beautifully, it’s a fantastic car. … I’m really proud of this hot rod. I’ve personally had this car over 180 miles per hour and still going. So, it’s fast, I will tell you that.”

Another NASCAR connection: The car was modified by RK Motors, the Charlotte shop and retailer owned by Rob Kauffman, the former [...]

The year Corvette production shifted from St. Louis, Missouri to Bowling Green, Kentucky was 1981. The proud men and women working at Bowling Green have been producing America’s greatest sports car ever since, and they’ll continue to do so in the years to come. However, the assembly line has remained relatively unchanged since the introduction of the C5-gen Corvette.

There’s no denying the plant is long overdue an upgrade, and that upgrade is expected to be made at the end of the 2017 model year. General Motors earmarked $290 million for Bowling Green for new assembly technologies in 2016. This money comes atop two earlier investments: $439 million for retooling and a new paint shop, plus $44 million for the build center.

Citing insider information, our friends at Corvette Blogger are adamant that an “official announcement from the plant is coming soon.” The closure is expected to come at the end of June, after the [...]