The year 1967 was a wild time for Corvettes. Originally intended to be the first year of production for the new shark design, 1967 instead turned out to be the final year of the Sting Rays, with what many have called the "cleanest" design for any of the C2 offerings. While the lines on the '67 may have been cleaner, the production of them included plenty of events that were anything but.

The '96 production year was a tough one for Corvette sales. The fast-approaching C5 was on the horizon-threatening to steal potential buyers of '96 Corvettes who were coiled, ready to jump on the all-new '97 Corvettes as soon as they became available. Chevrolet knew it needed something to tickle the purse strings of Corvette shoppers and put a '96 on their must-have list. Not surprisingly, they went to the root of Corvette fanaticism: performance!

For years, the search for the last Corvette of a generation has been an adventure for Corvette lovers. Discovering what the last VIN number is of the last-ever Vette built on that platform has been the easy part. The hard part-finding the car that matches that VIN-makes searching for a needle in a haystack look easy. (Especially if, when found, that last-ever car is not intact, with any unique parts scattered far and wide.)

For most of us, the '78 movie Corvette Summer didn't quite hit the heights of some of the other movies that prominently featured cars, such as American Graffiti or Thunder Road or even Smokey and the Bandit. Even with the star power of Mark Hamill, fresh off his Luke Skywalker role in the blockbuster Star Wars, Corvette Summer was more like the kind of Saturday afternoon schedule-filler movie you'd tune across on one of the independent UHF channels enroute to some real entertainment like, oh, Roller Derby.

Of all the paint colors that General Motors (and in particular, Chevrolet) offered across their '60 passenger-car lineup, Cinnamon wasn't one of the eight factory choices on the Corvette. But don't let that keep you from enjoying this Vette Rod. And don't let the C4 chassis on an SRIII round-tube frame stop you either, though the '95 Vette discs at each corner have much more stopping power than any factory '60 Vette brake system offered.

What generation of Corvette makes the best Vette Rod? Some say the C2, combining the classic Sting Ray styling with latter-day Vette power and handling. Some say the C4, as a well-used one can be turned into quite a performer and looker (like what we're doing with Project C4orce). Wayne Ausherman's '56 makes a strong case for treating first-generation Corvettes to Vette Rod-style powertrain and chassis updates, along with some custom touches all its own.

It's a call that comes just after launch, as the space shuttle clears maximum dynamic pressure, the point where the atmosphere's density and the shuttle's increasing speed coincide. For the moment, the shuttle's Earth-shaking engines are cut back to around 64 percent of their rated power. Then, at around 35,000 feet and at a velocity of over 1,600 mph, the shuttle clears the last obstacle between it and orbit. Across the com crackle those four words, signaling that it's time to drop the hammer and let the rocket fly: "Go at throttle up."

Is the '67 Sting Ray the best of the second-generation Corvettes? And is Lynn Haas' Rallye Red convertible the best of the bunch?

Corvette Racing history was again made in France when Lance Miller fulfilled his father's dream of returning the class-winning #3 car to The 24 Hours of Le Mans for the 50th anniversary of its historic class win. A feature-length documentary and a book on this great human interest story called The Quest are both in the works from Michael Brown Productions. Release is schedule for late Fall 2010. You can view a trailer of The Quest below.

OK, long-time Vette lovers: Just how long (and how strong) has been your attraction to America's Only True Sports Car? Does it go back to the days before you could spell the word Corvette? For Dave Barkus it does.

Some of the biggest attention-getters in the Corvette world were, at one time, projects that may have looked good from a distance. Be it 2 feet, 20 feet, or 20 miles, there was a distance from which these Vettes looked good. But their flaws became more evident the closer you got.

One thing you have to remember about the Corvette: It almost didn't survive its initial ('53-'55) years. In fact, an interdivisional memo written by Zora Arkus-Duntov in October 1954 helped convince Chevy's upper management to keep Corvette going beyond 1955. In that memo, he chided Chevy for considering dropping Corvette while arch-rival Ford's two-seat Thunderbird was still in production. "If Ford makes success where we failed, it may hurt . . . We will leave an opening in which they can hit at will. 'Ford out-engineered, outsold, or ran Chevrolet's pride and joy off the market.' Maybe the idea is far-fetched. I can only gauge in terms of my own reactions or actions. In the bare-fisted fight we're in now, I would hit at any opening I could find and the situation where Ford enters and where Chevrolet retreats, it is not an opening, it is a hole!"

Our European Correspondent Gets His '64 Shot In A London Studio
There is something seductive about almost any city in the springtime, and London rates among the best with its carefully maintained mature trees and extensive parks. It is an anti-car city, with the equivalent of a $12 per day "congestion charge" for entering its large central zone between 7:00 a.m. and 6:00 p.m. We can see city towers from 30 miles away and sometimes the light reflecting on the Thames River from our farm on Kent's North Downs, but it's a painful two-hour drive at peak times. For me, driving should always be a pleasure, so when I have business in London I take the new Javelin train, which reaches the central London St. Pancras station in just 18 minutes. This Hitachi-built electric train travels mainly underground at an astonishing 140 mph, using the same high-speed tracks as the 180-mph London to Paris Eurostar.

What a team of first-generation Corvette experts found, during an inspection held during 2009's Corvettes at Carlisle, was that the well-used '57 Corvette before them was one of two '57 Corvettes built to race at Nassau, Daytona, Sebring, and Le Mans starting in late 1956.

An old maxim goes, "If just enough is almost right, even more is better." For some Vette owners, that applies to their engine's output, as they seek more power and torque for quicker elapsed times and higher speeds on the dragstrip.

How does that old saying go? "Old Vette Rods never die . . . they get rebuilt into something faster, quicker, and cooler." That may have been made up as this story was written, but it definitely applies in the case of Tommy Vinciguerra's '61 Corvette-based Vette Rod.

Most of us veterans remember 1975 vividly. Well, at least as Corvettes go! We all liked the new capacitive-discharge high energy ignition (HEI) because more spark to the cylinders meant more overall efficiency with a little extra power, too. We didn't like the new 2-1-2, catalytic converter exhaust system. Both head pipes merged into some sort of emissions-removal box, exited at the rear of same, and then split back into dual exhaust pipes. But when all was said and done, it was a great item and very good for Mother Earth. Tests also revealed that horsepower losses on the already low-output 350 engine were in the neighborhood of five percent.

It's said that good things come in small packages. But when Laurie Hekking's '59 Corvette first arrived at Jim Barr's shop, Barr's Performance in Naples, Florida, more than five years ago, it came in small packages, big packages, really big packages-the very definition of a basket case.

What word sums up the market for Corvettes, judging by some of the auction results this year?

For many Corvette owners, their first experience with "America's Only True Sports Car"-or, at least the one that made a lasting impression on them-was an electronic one. In the early '60s, it was via CBS-TV and the drama Route 66 on Friday nights. In the late '90s, it was via a top-selling game for a state-of-the-art video game system.

There are as many ways to define "fun" as there are Corvette owners. Some define it as restoring or preserving an ultra-rare Corvette, while others describe the process of turning a worn or trashed Vette into a modern-tech Vette Rod. In the case of Chris Mazzilli, his definition of fun with his Corvette is an active one. "For me, any collector car I have, I drive," he says from his home in New York City.

Sometimes the Corvette of your dreams isn't the first one that you lay eyes upon. In the case of Tom and Melissa Jenco, their dream Vette-the one you see here-was the second. Back in 2006, the Jencos had been married just six months. "My wife said, 'Start looking for a Corvette if you want one,'" Tom recalls. The first one they found that interested them was located in Texas. "We were going to fly down there, see the car, pay for it, and drive it back. But the guy didn't want to do that-he wanted to see what he could get for it on eBay. My wife said, 'Forget it,' and she ended up finding this Corvette on the Internet."

Way back when, The General built "dream cars" not only to test public reaction to new styling concepts and engineering ideas, but also to inspire those who saw them. Witness the success of the ultimate Motorama dream car-the Corvette itself. Those lucky to see GM's traveling spectacular got a chance to see variations on the original '53 Corvette design when the '54 Motorama opened up wide. Among them was the first Nomad wagon (or "Waldorf Nomad," as it's now known, thanks to the legendary New York venue the Motorama packed when it played The Big Apple), and "Corvair"-a fastback that took its name from Corvette and Chevy's top-line steel-bodied car, Bel Air.

Did you know you could buy a C5 in kit form back in the day? Me neither. You couldn't buy one of these Corvettes from your local Chevrolet dealer. You had to be approved by GM to buy one of these C5 Corvettes. Then after you were approved, you had to go to the parts counter to place your order for the car. When your Corvette was finally delivered, most of the car arrived in boxes. Oh, you also had to drive to Flint, Michigan, to pick up the rolling chassis.

You've heard stories about how someone buys someone else's project, and what follows is horror story after horror story, including misrepresented, mismatched, or missing parts, frames of questionable integrity, fiberglass repair work done with cut-up Budweiser cartons as backing (and the content of those cartons as . . . well, never mind!) and paint schemes that are a horror story, not only in design but also execution. (Which should have happened to the designer and painter -Ed.)