LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) -- Thieves took eight Corvettes from the lot of a Kentucky automobile plant where the legendary muscle car is built, but officers recovered the vehicles and made an arrest, police said.

The cars were taken from the GM Bowling Green Assembly plant in southern Kentucky, the home of the Chevrolet Corvette since the early 1980s. The eight cars were valued at $1.2 million, police said.

Police said the thieves cut a fence at the plant to get the cars out. A man later arrested and charged with the theft of three cars said while being booked into jail that if he "would have made it back to Michigan, I would have been paid big," according to a police report.

The first car was located Saturday when a woman at an apartment complex in Bowling Green called police to say she saw a man park a new Corvette with stickers on it at the complex and then walk away.

Police contacted the manager of the assembly plant, who checked the inventory and reported that eight Corvettes were missing, according to a Bowling Green Police report.

Police later located four more Corvettes at different locations.

The last three were found after officers received a call from a transporter driver who said he was asked to come to a location to pick up an older model Corvette to transport to Michigan. When the driver arrived, he saw three new 2025 Corvettes and told police the two men trying to move them were in a hurry. He also noticed damage on the bottom of the cars and called the transaction "weird," according to the citation.

When police arrived, they detained a 21-year-old man after a chase and charged him with receiving stolen property, fleeing arrest and engaging with organized crime. Another man fled in a Jeep with Ohio tags, police said.

Bowling Green Police Public Information Officer Ronnie Ward said Tuesday that no other arrests have been made.