The 1963 model, the final result of more than a half-decade’s worth of research both on and off the racetrack, enjoyed immense success. Its Stingray sobriquet is the clue to its origins: for the second-generation Corvette literally evolved from a racecar – the Stingray racer that Bill Mitchell had personally funded and created.

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That Mitchell put his own money into what became an archetypal vehicle is surprising considering that at the time he was an employee of General Motors. Born in 1912, Bill Mitchell had worked briefly as an advertising illustrator and as the official illustrator of the Automobile Racing Club of America before being recruited by Harley Earl to join the Art and Colour division of General Motors in 1935.  Mitchell is responsible for the design of over 72.5 million automobiles produced by GM, including the 1938 Cadillac Sixty Special, the 1963 Buick Riviera, the 1963 Corvette Stingray and the 1970 Chevrolet Camaro.

Mitchell spent the entirety of his 42-year career in automobile design at General Motors, eventually becoming Vice President of Design, a position he held for 19 years until his retirement in 1977. For his part, Harley Earl was the first Vice President of Design at General Motors.

He was an industrial designer and a pioneer of modern transportation design. A coachbuilder by trade, Earl pioneered the use of freeform sketching and hand-sculpted clay models as design techniques.

Under the irresistible tagline of ‘Only a man with a heart of stone could withstand temptation like this’ the Stingray was an instant marketing success, and this was only added to with the slight evolutionary refinements of the 1964 model. You can find this out for yourself with a model that we presently have at Beverly Hills Car Club, a 1964 Chevrolet Corvette L84 327/375 Fuelie Convertible that is finished in its factory color Riverside Red (923), combined with a red interior.

The Car is powered by a numbers-matching 327ci V8 engine (375HP) with a Rochester mechanical fuel injection and a four-speed manual transmission. It comes with concealed headlights, left-side mirror, chrome split bumpers, white soft top, Michelin white-line tires, solid wheels with Chevrolet Corvette design hub caps, walnut-grained three-spoke steering wheel, lap belts, chrome inside door release knobs, Delco AM/FM radio, and an analog clock.

In addition to the equipment, this car comes with the owner’s manual booklet and manufacturer’s literature. This truly gorgeous fuel-injected Corvette is mechanically sound.

And our Corvette is a Fuelie. So precisely what is that? Well, more than six or so decades have passed since the first mechanical fuel-injection system appeared on the C1 Corvette and full-size Chevy sedans, but it is remarkable how well the system, the ‘Fulie’, worked in its day. Developed by Zora Arkus-Duntov and John Dolza, the Rochester Ramjet FI – as the Fuelie is more politely known – still stands as a breakthrough feat of engineering, long before the advent of computer-controlled induction in the early 1980s.

Nowadays the Rochester unit might seem rudimentary. After all, it had just three basic components: a fuel meter, an air meter, and an intake manifold. Yet they kept a continuous supply of fuel accumulating behind the intake valves, ready and waiting for the valves to open, avoiding the fuel-sloshing common to carburetors back then.

On the Ramjet an air-metering unit measures how much air is flowing into the intake manifold, then instructs the fuel-metering unit as to how much fuel should be sent to the engine.

Mixing of the air and fuel begins within the nozzles themselves and continues in the cylinder head, in the path between the nozzles and the intake valves.

The Ramjet was a major improvement over the carburetors of the day. Unlike a carb in which the venturi signal directly pulls fuel into the air stream, the venturi signal of the fuel injection tells the fuel meter how much fuel to inject into the air stream. Because this fuel-metering scheme was so much better than that of conventional carburetors, the problem of erratic mixture changes due to fuel slosh during hard cornering was completely eliminated.

Due to concerns over rear visibility, the 1963 coupe’s two-piece split rear window was dropped for the 1964 model in favor of a single piece of arched glass. Besides the coupe’s backbone window, the two simulated air intakes were eliminated from the hood, though their indentations remained.

Also, the decorative air-exhaust vent on the coupe’s rear pillar was made functional, but only on the left side. The car’s rocker-panel trim lost some of its ribs and gained black paint between those ribs that remained; wheel covers were simplified; and the fuel filler/deck emblem gained concentric circles around its crossed-flags insignia.

Inside, the color-keyed steering wheel rim was now in simulated walnut.

A few suspension refinements were made for 1964. The front coil springs were changed from constant-rate to progressive or variable-rate and were more tightly wound at the top, while leaf thickness of the rear transverse spring was also altered, thus providing a more comfortable ride with no sacrifice in handling. Shock absorbers were reworked toward the same end.

The 1964 Corvette arrived with a new standard shock containing within its fluid reservoir a small bag of Freon gas that absorbed heat. Chevy added more sound insulation and revised body and transmission mounts for the 1964 Corvette. It also fitted additional bushings to quiet the shift linkage and placed a new boot around the lever. The result was a more livable car for everyday transportation.

And in the Fuelie Stringray there would be no sloshing on corners.

-Alex Manos, Owner