Museum-Restored 1965 Chevy Corvette Convertible Features a Story and Rare L78

From shed-recovered to longtime storage and from garage-kept to barn finds, these “America’s sports cars” have something in common: they have been sitting idle for a while. Perhaps this is cause for celebration from a new owner’s perspective, which might explain the love for this particular C2 year. But this unit that we see here at auction from Clasiq also comes with a story.

Oh boy, and what a tale. But for that, we are just going to leave you alone to ogle at the auction portal’s six-point description novel and get the entire chronicle. I always hated summaries, so I am just going to stick to the main highlights to help us better understand why it is a very cool catch.

So, if we understand the seller’s (aka WendellB) explanations correctly, the Sting Ray Convertible now resides in Lubbock, Texas but for years it has been part of the 300-plus collection of cars hosted by the famous Ron McWhorter Museum of Ruidoso, New Mexico. Apparently, Ron wanted a perfect 900MM-coded Milano Maroon 1965 Corvette and spared no time or expenses to get it perfectly restored once in his possession.

The car is allegedly a numbers-matching original set-piece, complete with a black vinyl interior and one-year-only 396ci L78 V8 engine that was good for 425 horsepower, all of which were sent to the rear wheels through a Muncie four-speed manual transmission. There is both a contrasting black top and a matching body hue hardtop included in the sale.

Well, now we obviously need to talk about the potential damage to the bank account. Naturally, this ’65 Chevy Corvette Sting Ray Convertible is rare and original enough (plus has just 17,877 miles/28,770 km on the odometer) to warrant a bidding war. And, so far, the highest offer has already reached 88k with another day and a few hours left on the auction clock.