Although the Sting Ray is substantial, it doesn’t feel as heavy as a 427-engined anything should. The steering is heavy to the touch, without much feel, and reasonably quick. There is enough power to break adhesion and steer with the throttle near the limit of adhesion at any speed below 100 mph, so it didn’t feel nose-heavy. In fact, it felt quite neutral at, say, 65 mph, with just a little more power cranked on than necessary to hold a given radius. Among the changes for ’67 was the addition of 1/2-inch wider wheel rims (now 6.0 inches) and wide, low-profile tires. Any car handles only as well as its tires will allow, and the Sting Ray’s Akron Fats are well mated with the all-independent suspension.
The Corvette’s handling is not quite matched by its ride. A Ferrari 330/GTC is harsher, but what the driver feels tells him something about the relationship between the tires and the road. The Sting Ray rides softly and vaguely — you’re never sure what the car is trying to tell you. Only the Mercedes-Benz models, and to a lesser extent, the Rover 2000, the Porsche 911 and the BMW-TI, have managed to combine a soft ride with a suspension system that talks to you.
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The Sting Ray’s four-wheel disc brakes are in a class of their own among American cars, and up to the highest standards set abroad. We have just about exhausted our cherished supply of superlatives for these brakes, so suffice it to say that they’re the best, and if the Nader-Haddon axis wanted to accomplish something really useful, they should pressure Detroit into putting Sting Ray brakes on every car it builds.
Nearly all the changes for ’67 are functional. The louvers behind the front wheels, for instance, really do exhaust hot engine compartment air. The optional bolt-on aluminum wheels now save weight; in the past, they had a knock-off system which made them heavier than the stock steel wheels. The pull-up handbrake between the seats is easier to get at than the old umbrella handle under the dash, but it isn’t very impressive in operation. Normally, an emergency brake operates the same linings as those operated by the brake pedal, but because the Corvette’s emergency brake is entirely separate (two 6.5 x 1.25-inch drums within the rear discs), the linings never get burnished — a point for owners to watch. The way to run them in is to slowly, carefully, pull up the handbrake — while the car is moving — every once in a while.
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We have only two complaints to register about the Sting Ray. The late Ken Miles, in testing an early model Corvette, theorized “the bigger a car is outside, the smaller it is inside.” This is still true; the Corvette is very large for a two-seater sports car, without a commensurate amount of room inside. We can understand why. The bucket seats aren’t perfect; they lack lateral support because delicate young things have to swing their legs around to one side to get in and out. The seats are too close to the floor to gain headroom and keep a stylishly low roofline. The 427 engine does take up a lot of room that might otherwise be left in the footwells, despite the fact that the engine is offset to the right to give the driver a bit more space. The tightness around the hips, elbows and shoulders is caused by the width of the transmission tunnel. A rear-engined (or mid-engined) design would eliminate all these objections, and if Chevrolet ever builds one, it will be to improve creature comfort and decrease overall size, not to make the car handle better. But after the Corvair lawsuits, we don’t think GM will ever go this route.
As it sits, the Sting Ray is the most sophisticated passenger car made in America — in terms of engine, drive train, suspension and brakes — and among the best engineered sports cars made anywhere. If that isn’t good enough to make it the Best All-Around Car of 1967, we’d like to know what is.
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