Thursday, February 20, 2014

Rose lake is a Porsche grave... it once was a sinkhole that swallowed a Porsche repair shop in Winter Haven Fla


30 years ago in Winter Park, Florida, under a German car repair shop, asinkhole opened up taking five Porsches and a Datsun pickup truck with it.

Ralph had heard that a sinkhole opened up earlier in the day near the repair shop where his Porsche 911 was in for service, and he wanted to see if the news had picked up on the story. About as soon as the television came on, he saw the back of the repair shop crumble, revealing his Mexico Blue 911, and then seconds later watched as the 911 plunged into the widening hole.

 “Well, that’s what happened to your car!” one of his friends said, and turned the television off.


The sinkhole started forming late that Friday evening and rapidly spread the next day, captivating the nation. It eventually became the largest natural sinkhole that people saw form, and gobbled up at least one residence, part of the town’s pool, parts of two streets, a Datsun pickup truck with camper, and five or six Porsches.



most of the cars were removed from the pit, but two Porsches weren't, and are still down there. A 928 was owned by a guy that a year later was busted for drugs...Stories have circulated that one of the cars retrieved from the sinkhole was full of cocaine. Fritsche said he never heard anything of the sort, but a year later, the owner of another car that fell into the Winter Park sinkhole – realtor Bob Govern, whose 1979 Porsche 928 was retrieved with Fritsche’s 911 – was sentenced to 45 years in prison for helping run a $300 million marijuana ring. “I wish it had just gone down the hole,” Govern told the Orlando Sentinel in 1991.  Really? I'm not surprised that a real estate guy in Orlando in 1981 with a 2 year old 928 was busted for drugs, are you?

photos from and information found on http://blog.hemmings.com/index.php/2014/02/12/sinkhole-81-the-day-the-earth-swallowed-five-porsches/