The story of Corvette Museum’s sinkhole date back to the early days of this year, and you would think that by now one of the biggest car makers in the world would have fixed everything. They haven’t. In fact, they just announced their plans to restore just three of the sinkhole-damaged Corvettes.

The reason for that is not just because the repair costs a lot of money. It is a bit that. But the main is reason is because the sinkhole itself and the cars the fell into it have become a sort of tourist attraction. They turned the damage into a special display, which is kind of clever.

So while GM agreed to provide $250,000 for the repair of three sinkhole-damaged Corvettes – including the 2009 Corvette ZR1 prototype, a white 1992 convertible, and a 1962 model – they will keep the ther five damaged cars in their as-recovered state to preserve the historical significance of the cars. They will become part of a future display at the museum.

This may seem like Corvette Museum is going to advertise their incompetency and the fact that they have a terrible old building, but GM’s brass see it differently:

“Our goal was to help the National Corvette Museum recover from a terrible natural disaster by restoring all eight cars,” said Mark Reuss, GM executive vice president, Global Product Development. “However, as the cars were recovered, it became clear that restoration would be impractical because so little was left to repair. And, frankly, there is some historical value in leaving those cars to be viewed as they are.”