I was planning on writing a post about what I think is the most beautiful American car every built—the 1963 Corvette Stingray —and feature one of my photographs of this car I made at Cars & Coffee. When I looked at the images in Adobe Bridge, I that Mary had a folder from the event, so I looked inside. In addition to all of the closeups she normally likes to make at these shows there were two images of a Stingray that I’d also photographed but made from at totally different angle. I liked her photograph so much, I decided to include it here today.
Today’s Post by Joe Farace, photo by Mary Farace
The 1963 Corvette Sting Ray split window coupe is, I think, the most beautiful modern American car. I think that in the pantheon of classic automobile designs, it’s up there alongside the most beautiful British modern car ever built, the 1961 Series 1 Jaguar E-type.
How Mary Made this photograph: The above image was made at Cars & Coffee at The Vehicle Vault in Parker, Colorado. It was shot by Mary Farace using a Nikon D5100—before she went totally mirrorless—with a Nikkor 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G VR lens at 18mm and an exposure of 1/500 sec at f/9 and ISO 200.
The 1963 Sting Ray production car’s lineage can be traced to two separate GM projects, the Q-Corvette, and more directly, Bill Mitchell’s racing Sting Ray design. In 1957, the Q-Corvette was envisioned as a smaller, more advanced Corvette that was designed as a coupe. boasting a rear transaxle, independent rear suspension and four-wheel disc brakes, with the rear brakes mounted inboard Jaguar-style. Exterior styling was purposeful, with peaked fenders, a long nose, and a short, bobbed tail.
The 1963 Stingray was the first-ever production Corvette coupe and sported an unusual styling element for its day— a split rear window—but only for that one model year. The rear window’s basic shape had been originally conceived by Bob McLean for the Q-model. Within GM, some people loved it, others hated it so it was relegated to that one year’s model. Nowadays, everybody loves it. The quad headlamps from the previous year’s models were retained but were hidden, the first American car so equipped with pop-up or hidden headlight since the 1942 DeSoto. The 2006 C5 Corvette was the first model after that time without hidden headlights and my oh my, did the Corvette purists hate that.
PS: Look for my review of the upcoming book, the fifth edition of The Complete Book of Corvette that will be appearing in a special post of Joe’s Book Club, real soon now.