1967 Sting Ray

First, it was a slow starter. Then, it became a dominating racer.

In 1963, when Larry Shinoda's vision of what the Corvette should be became the Sting Ray, it became a true supercar.

It hardly seems possible that next year, the last of the original Sting Rays (it didn't become "Stingray" until after 1969) will be 30 years old. The 1967 models were the last to feature the bodystyle Shinoda first conceived - the style that really made the Corvette the most recognizable American-made car of all time.

In the five-year run of the original Sting Ray, from 1963-1967, some 118,000 of these cars were put on the road. Today, these cars are highly sought after by collectors and sportscar enthusiasts, many of whom won't hesitate to tell you that no car made either before or since has been the equal of these machines.

Perhaps the mightiest of the American muscle cars was 1967's L88 Sting Ray, of which only 20 were built, and the virtually-identical L89, which is even more rare, only 16 of them having rolled off the assembly line.

The L88 was offered as a production model only to qualify it for racing, and was so powerful it wasn't even street-legal in many states! Chevy gave the L88 and L89 a 427 powerplant like other high-performance Corvettes, but put special race-only engines in those cars. These supercharged 427s featured aluminum heads, no provisions for street-legal emissions controls and a Rocker Crusher gearbox, plus choices for the buyer such as a heater-delete option that trimmed a few more pounds from the car, which could easily surpass 150 mph.

Chevrolet then advertised the output of the motors at 430hp, but the actual output of these cars was easily 500 horsepower! The few buyers who did get to put these cars on the street were reminded of the monster under the hood by warnings on both the delivery paperwork that stated "this unit operates only on Sunoco 260 or equivalent gas of very high octane," and another reminder posted on the car's console, below the gearshift, reading "Warning: Vehicle must operate on a fuel having a minimum of 103 research octane and 95 motor octane or engine damage may result."

Not a car for the faint of heart - either driver or collector - the 1967 Corvette Sting Ray...truly one of the greatest muscle cars of all time.