Vintage M/T Review: 1965 Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray Convertible – A Walk On The Mild(er) Side

Joined image of a two-page spread from Motor Trend, April 1965, showing a B&W photo of a Corvette Sting Ray convertible with the headline "Corvette Sting Ray Road Test"

For 1965, the Corvette Sting Ray finally got disc brakes all around, providing the racy C2 Corvette with stronger, much more consistent stopping power. In April 1965, Motor Trend tested the new brakes in a Corvette convertible, which also gave them a chance to road test a relatively mild-mannered ‘Vette.

Detail of rear deck badge and right tail lights on a Nassau Blue 1965 Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray convertbile

1965 Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray convertible / Mecum Auctions

 

Marketing overuse has left me with a strong flinch reaction to the word “iconic,” but it’s an appropriate term for the C2 Corvette Sting Ray Sport Coupe, which is one of the defining American car designs of the 1960s. Most car shows and classic car auctions will be well stocked with Corvette coupes, to the point that jaded CC reader types will just shrug and walk by to gawk at a Twin-Stick Rambler Marlin or ’68 Riviera. However, I’m always surprised to remind myself that throughout the run of the C2, the convertible actually outsold the coupe, usually by a significant margin. It was a close race in 1963, the first year of the C2 and its controversial split window design (replaced with a one-piece backlight for 1964), but from there on, the convertible consistently outsold the coupe by a margin of 70 percent or more.

Side view of a Nassau Blue 1965 Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray convertible with the top down

1965 Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray / Mecum Auctions

 

In September 1964, Motor Trend had tested a Sting Ray coupe in its hottest form: L84 fuel-injected engine, close-ratio four-speed, aluminum wheels, and special J56 sintered metallic drum brakes. For this road test, which ran in the April 1965 issue, M/T opted instead for the more popular convertible, with the wide-ratio four-speed and the milder 300 hp L75 version of the familiar 327 cu. in. (5,354 cc) Chevy V-8. Their test car also had Positraction, power steering, power brakes, radio with power antenna, whitewalls, and a detachable hardtop.

I dug around a bit to find some nice photos of a similarly equipped car. The Nassau Blue example seen in the color photos (although the photos are drawn from multiple different sale listings, they are — with one exception — of the same car, which was sold at a Mecum auction in 2021 and more recently put up for sale again) is equipped about like the Motor Trend tester, except that it lacks power steering and power windows. Close enough.

Front 3q view of a Nassau Blue 1965 Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray convertible with the detachable hardtop in place

1965 Sting Ray convertible with fiberglass hardtop / Connors Motorcar Company

 

The detachable fiberglass hardtop was surprisingly popular in the C2 run. About half of 1963–1967 Sting Ray convertibles had it, and 8 percent of convertible buyers ordered only the hardtop, with no separate soft top.

Chevrolet Corvette C2 Production by Body Style, 1963–1967
Model Year Coupe Convertible
(All)
Hardtop and
Soft Top
Hardtop Only
1963 10,594 10,919 5,739 1,099
1964 8,304 13,925 7,023 1,220
1965 8,186 15,376 7,787 1,277
1966 9,958 17,762 8,463 1,303
1967 8,504 14,436 6,880 895
Total 45,546 72,418 35,892 5,794

 

Motor Trend, April 1965, page 47, right side of the lead image above, with the nose of the 1965 Corvette convertible, this time with the text above it
Standard four-wheel disc brakes were a great advance for the Sting Ray, and it’s a shame they weren’t standard on the C2 Corvette from the start. For street cars, Chevrolet had previously been content to offer metallic linings for the standard drums, or the rare J56 package with its “elephant ear” scoops for people who wanted to race. However, metallic linings were not very satisfactory for normal use, and while the J56 brakes were essentially fade-proof at racing speeds, uneven heating could make for uneven application — not a laughing matter at speeds over 100 mph.

Ghost illustration of the disc brakes in a 1965 Corvette Sting Ray

GM’s Delco Moraine Division, which made the 1965 Corvette’s new discs, had recognized in the early 1950s that ventilated rotors with integral cooling fins dramatically improved disc brakes’ ability to dissipate heat, which not only reduced fade, but also greatly reduced lining wear, which was unacceptably high with European solid discs installed on heavier American cars. However, development had lagged, and the Delco vented discs appeared only on a few engineering test mules and concept cars. The discs Chevrolet had used on the 1963 Corvette Grand Sport were by Girling, and didn’t have quite enough heat dissipation capacity even after an early switch from solid to vented rotors.

B&W photo of the rear disc and integral drum parking brake of the 1965 Corvette, with the caption "Rear Disc and Parking Brake Detail" and the words "Fig. 4" in the lower left

Although GM was coy about this point even in the technical papers it presented to the SAE, Mike Mueller says the fixed-caliper/floating piston vented discs Chevrolet finally offered on the production Corvette were actually designed by Kelsey-Hayes (although they were manufactured for Chevrolet by Delco Moraine), and thus were very similar to the brakes used on the front wheels of the 1965 Ford Thunderbird and Lincoln Continental. (The rotor dimensions were the same: 11.75 inches in diameter, 1.25 inches thick.) Unlike the T-Bird and Continental, the Sting Ray used these brakes in the rear as well, adding small duo-servo drum brakes in the rear hubs to act as parking brakes, an idea borrowed from the Corvette Grand Sport.

Unlike Ford, which was reluctant to offer disc brakes on heavy U.S. cars without power assistance, Chevrolet didn’t want to mandate power brakes, which Corvette buyers seldom ordered. (Since achieving maximum braking force required a pedal effort of 127 lb, the $43.05 cost of power brakes seems like money well spent, but only 4,044 Corvette buyers ordered a brake booster in 1965.) With discs all around, the Corvette didn’t need the proportioning valve fitted to the disc-braked Ford cars, but the front brake pistons were bigger than the rears, ensuring that the front brakes would do more of the work and would always lock first in a hard stop.

Motor Trend, April 1965, page 48, with the text "Corvette Sting Ray Road Test continued" at the top and three photos of a 1965 Corvette convertible, with soft top up, top down, and with fiberglass hardtop installed

Motor Trend didn’t record exceptionally short stopping distances with the new discs. Editor Bob McVay said, “Our shortest stop was 137 feet and the longest was 166 feet, for a 153.65-foot average stopping distance for our hard stops.” This was longer than their 1964 test car with the heavy-duty drum setup. Some of this was due to the tires, which were ordinary 7.75-15 rayon bias-ply, and didn’t provide an exceptional amount of grip.

Graph showing pedal travel in inches and line pressure in psi for drum brakes and disc brakes, with the caption "Fig. 21 - Pedal travel comparison - Corvette disc versus drum brakes

Unlike drums, which are self-energizing, four-wheel disc brakes provide linear braking effort

 

Nonetheless, the discs still had a big edge in normal use because they offered linear, swerve-free response, and the linearity and front brake bias made it easier to keep the wheels short of lockup in a hard stop. Even with organic lining, the brakes were more or less fade-resistant in street use: swept area was 461.2 square inches, up from 328 square inches with the standard 1964 drums.

(As hardcore Corvette fans are no doubt aware, you could still order drum brakes as a delete option in 1965, and 316 buyers opted for 11-inch drums in exchange for a $64.50 credit.)

Raised convertible top on a Nassau Blue 1965 Corvette Sting Ray convertible

If you ordered the hardtop on a C2 Sting Ray convertible, you could delete the soft top mechanism entirely as a no-cost option / Connors Motorcar Company

 

McVay wasn’t too pleased with the test car’s detachable hardtop, which was an expensive extra, with a list price of $236.75. The bottom photo caption of the above page complained:

Roadster shows versatility, with three distinct body styles when optional hard top is ordered. Definitely not a one-man job, taking off top can be a chore. Once in place, it rattled and required lots of muscle to life up in order to get into luggage compartment.

Top view of the Nassau Blue fiberglass hardtop of a 1965 Corvette, leaning against a wall

Installing or removing the detachable hardtop was a two-person job / Connors Motorcar Company

View of the interior side of the Nassau Blue hardtop of a 1965 Corvette

Motor Trend complained that even when properly installed, the hardtop tended to rattle / Connors Motorcar Company

 

Motor Trend, April 1965, page 49, showing three photos of the 1965 Corvette cornering on a dirt road and on a racetrack

The captions of the photos on the page above read:

Fully independent suspension provided excellent traction on the road, off the road, and on the track. Front tread is increased by .5 inch; rear by .6 inch for 1965. Car showed minimum of lean and understeer and maximum control at speed.

Front 3q view of a Nassau Blue 1965 Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray convertible with the top down

1965 Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray convertible / Mecum Auctions

 

Corvette handling remained impressive, with surprisingly neutral balance for an American car of this era. “It’s a car that a good driver can really fall in love with,” McVay said, “and one that a bad driver, or an over-enthusiastic one, can get himself into trouble with just as quickly.” In really hard cornering, he found that carburetor flooding was a problem — an area where the L84 fuelie had a decided advantage — and that the tail “felt just a bit twitchy on wet or dirt roads.” (To my annoyance, while the text mentions the stiffer optional suspension, McVay didn’t make clear whether the test car had that option or not, but he said he found the ride “a bit choppy” at around-town speeds and on rough pavement.)

Rear 3q view of a Nassau Blue 1965 Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray convertible with the top down

1965 Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray convertible / Mecum Auctions

 

Motor Trend, April 1965, page 50, with B&W photos of the generator, the disc brakes, and the rear tool kit, plus another photo of the 1965 Corvette on a winding mountain road

Front view of a Nassau Blue 1965 Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray convertible with the top down

1965 Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray convertible / Mecum Auctions

 

As Motor Trend noted, cargo space, not a strong point on Corvette coupes, was strictly mediocre on the Sting Ray convertible, and getting at it with the top down wasn’t easy. Obviously, no one expected a Corvette to have trunk space like a Pontiac Star Chief, but with the convertible, anything longer than a day trip would mean packing light and probably a lot of swearing when loading or unloading.

Top well of a Nassau Blue 1965 Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray convertible with the top up

Well for the folding top consumed much of the space behind the seats / Connors Motorcar Company

Top well of a Nassau Blue 1965 Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray convertible with the top down

With the top down, you had to travel light / Connors Motorcar Company

 

The L75 engine was a $52.65 option that went into 8,358 Corvettes in 1965, 35.5 percent of production. It gave you 300 gross horsepower and 350 lb-ft of torque, 50 gross horsepower and 10 lb-ft more than the standard Corvette engine. (Chevrolet unfortunately didn’t publish net ratings for any 1965 Corvette engines other than the base engine, which had 210 net horsepower.)

Chevrolet L76 327 engine in a Nassau Blue 1965 Corvette Sting Ray convertible

The other blue photo car has a modified engine with L79 intake manifold and an aftermarket fuel injection system, so here’s a more weathered but more authentic L75 engine in a different Nassau Blue convertible / Bring a Trailer

 

McVay wrote:

Our “commuter” Corvette, with its 300-hp engine, was a very easy car to live with — much more so than former fuel-injection models we’ve driven. It started easily, was completely docile in traffic, needed only first and fourth for most normal demands, and it was very quiet. On the other hand, it gave excellent performance for a 3280-pound car when we used the 5500-rpm red line and the four-speed gearbox to the fullest extent.

Most normal driving gave between 11 and 14 mpg of premium gas, but steady highway cruising boosted this up to around 17 mpg with the standard 3.36 axle. Optional axles range from 3.08 to 4.56.

This powertrain obviously sacrificed some performance compared to the 1964 injected car: The fuelie was almost 2 seconds quicker to 60 mph. However, if you weren’t looking to race or to spend your days off in traffic court, performance was still more than adequate: 0 to 60 mph in 7.5 seconds, the quarter mile in 15.8 seconds at 90 mph, and an actual top speed of 124 mph, with the engine turning a reasonable 2,554 rpm at 60 mph. If that wasn’t enough, an extra $53.80 would buy you the 350 hp L79 engine, and the hairy L78 big-block engine would become available from March 1965.

Overhead view of the cabin of a Nassau Blue 1965 Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray convertible with blue vinyl interior and the driver's door open

1965 Corvette Sting Ray convertible with blue vinyl trim / Mecum Auctions

 

In addition to the new brakes, the 1965 Corvette got the louvers on the front fenders, new and somewhat more supportive seats, and the new “simulated cast magnesium racing wheels” with fake knock-off hubs. (For my money, the aluminum wheels were infinitely more attractive, but they also cost a hefty $322.80, so they were not commonly specified.) You could order the usual Detroit conveniences — the base and L75 engines could have Powerglide, and all but the L84 and L78 engines were available with air conditioning — but surprisingly few people did. Far more buyers ordered the hot L76 and L79 engines than opted for power steering, unusual for almost any Detroit product of this time.

Rear view of a Nassau Blue 1965 Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray convertible with the top down

1965 Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray convertible / Mecum Auctions

 

As the Motor Trend test car demonstrated, not all Sting Rays were hardcore performance cars, but a mild-mannered C2 Corvette was still pretty spicy by nearly any other standard. That’s part of why they’re still so beloved today.

Related Reading

Automotive History: 1963 Corvette Sting Ray – A Ravishing New Lust Object Appears Out Of The Depths Of The Ocean (by Paul N)
1963 Corvette Sting Ray Split-Window Fastback: And Where Exactly Did That Come From? (by Paul N)
Vintage M/T Review: Fuel-Injected 1964 Corvette Sting Ray – Serious Performance For Weekend Warriors (by me)
Curbside Classic: 1964 Chevrolet Corvette Convertible – Float like A Butterfly, Sting Like A Ray (by Tatra87)
Curbside Capsule: 1965 Corvette – Clean C2 Caps Convertible Cavalcade (by Ed Stembridge)
CC Capsule: 1966 Chevrolet Corvette Sting Ray Roadster – Trophy (by Joseph Dennis)
Curbside Classic Driving Impressions: 1967 Corvette L79 327/350 Convertible – A 50 Year-Old Dream Fulfilled (by Paul N)
Vintage R&T Review: 1967 Corvette Sting Ray (300HP 327) – “The Corvette For The Thinking Driver” (by Paul N)
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