stingray????

[rick spears]

ok, maybe this has been discussed on here, but i don't remember seeing it. which cars are "officially" stingrays? there seems to be alot of confusion about this issue. i had someone come up to me the other day and describe their 81' corvette stingray to me. i told them that i didn't think it was officially a stingray. i know (pretty sure anyway) that 63' was the first year to have the stingray badge, and 76' was the last. are these the only "official" stingrays? rick

[Joe C.]

Re: stingray????

'63-'67 Corvettes are Sting Rays
1968 Corvettes are Corvettes
'69-74 Corvettes are Stingrays
'75-'82 Corvettes are Stinkrays

[Louis T.]

Re: stingray????

If you are talking about car emblems:

1963-1967 Sting Ray
1969-1976 Stingray

This, of course, does not address the issue of how the cars were referred to within GM and/or through their marketing. If you examine year-by-year sales brochures and car ads, that should shed some light at least on the marketing side (I'd think the marketing would have gone hand-in-hand with the emblems, but I've never verified this). If you do, let us know what you find...

[Roy B.]

Re: stingray???? Joe I like that-Stinkray

53 to 55 was the only Corvette that was called a Roadster

[Duke W.]

Re: stingray????

Also Bill Mitchell's racer built on the Corvette SS "mule" chassis was called "Stingray".

Duke

[Jim W.]

Mitchell's 1959 racer was the first "Sting Ray" *NM*

[Richard M.]

Re: Roadster windows

Roy, could you get power windows on those?:-)

Right, no roll up windows on "real" roadsters. I think the British coined the phrase.

At least you don't have to worry about those lousy regulators breaking.

Rich

[Roy B.]

Re: Roadster windows "Rich"

But it is refreshing to stop get out open the trunk on a cold rainy night and get the darn things installed. See what your missing , your just spoiled

[Duke W.]

The original side emblem says "Stingray"

As a condition of buying the Corvette SS mule chassis from GM for one dollar, Mitchell agreed NOT to use the name "Corvette" nor "Chevrolet" nor use any name that was a GM trademark or any name that implied a GM connection.

Thus the name "Stingray" (same spelling as the marine animal) as a side emblem, and that was the name used to enter the car in SCCA races. It was the "Stingray Special".

Later photos of the car show a "Corvette" emblem on the rear, which was applied when GM decided to take "official" photographs of the car and hit the show car circuit after it was retired from racing to give a hint of the upcoming C1 replacement.

Decades later a production rear deck "Corvette Sting Ray" emblem was applied to the front - maybe so the average moron could make the connection of its historical place, but neither of the two above emblems were installed on the car when it was raced in 1959 and 1960, and it was simply called Stingray.

The better question is why was the name the broken into two words for the production car as opposed to using correct form spelling. Perhaps because GM could not trademark the form "Stingray", but could trademark "Sting Ray".

Duke

[rick spears]

Re: The original side emblem says "Stingray"

thanks guys! very interesting stuff that i had no idea about......i'm still not sure which corvettes are "officially" stingrays, but perhaps there is no definitive answer to that question. rick