Classic bowtie roadster, 1964 Chevrolet Corvette matching-numbers convertible

The second year of the second generation of Chevrolet Corvettes is sometimes overlooked, even though the cars had all of the Vette improvements of the previous year.   For the coupe version, the split rear window was replaced with solid glass, a stylistic downgrade for today’s collectors even though rear vision is no longer impeded.

And while the fake metal air intakes in the hood were removed for 1964, the indents to accommodate them still remain, resulting in a pair of weird rectangular shapes without any purpose, either functionally or stylistically.  You’d think GM would have sprung for smoothing that out before production.  It is fiberglass, after all.

The Pick of the Day is a 1964 Chevrolet Corvette convertible powered by the original matching-numbers 327/300-horsepower V8 and 4-speed manual transmission, according to the Sherman, Texas, dealer advertising the car on ClassicCars.com. 

The sports car looks straight and glossy in the photos with the ad, and the dealer says it was resprayed a while back in its original shade of Riverside Red, which was the most-popular Corvette color that year.  The car does, however, look scruffy under the hood. 

A removable factory hardtop is fitted, although there is no word in the ad whether a cloth convertible top is included.  The sparse description in the ad also fails to mention total mileage – Texas law mandates that vehicles older than 10 years be sold “mileage exempt” – or any restoration history aside from the repaint.  Those are questions a prospective buyer should ask. 

But the dealer does say the Corvette “presents well” and, most importantly, it “runs and drives well” and it “stops and handles great.” 

The stock interior looks very good in the photos, showing the C2 improvements in design and instrumentation made under Corvette team leader Zora Arkus-Duntov, who wanted Chevy’s two-seater to be more of a competitive sports car and less of a boulevard cruiser. 

This would be a nice Corvette for tooling around town or for cross-country driving, a classic sports car that you could rely on and that you could repair with parts from the neighborhood auto supply store.

This Corvette with its 300-horsepower engine is a step above the base 250-horsepower model but behind the 360- and 375-horsepower models, all of them powered by 327cid engines in varying states of tune.  The monetary values for the high-horsepower cars are typically one-third higher than the 300-horse versions.

As it is, this Corvette is priced at $39,500, which seems like a good deal but is actually spot on what Hagerty valuators say it’s worth.   Still seems like a lot of Corvette goodness for the money.

To view this listing on ClassicCars.com, see Pick of the Day.