You’ve had “those” days, haven’t you…when nothing goes right, fits right or acts right, when all your tools only round the heads on any bolts they touch, or when things that aren’t supposed to mess up get messed up.

But, once you figure out how to put things back together, there’s a ray of light shining down on you—maybe a real one through a skylight in your garage, or maybe a figurative one. And that ray of light usually has something to do with Corvettes.

In my case, a day filled with major-appliance frustrations got a whole lot better when some vintage-Vette researching resulted in a long chat with a Sting Ray owner and restorer who’s got a great piece of Corvette history in his garage.

That piece of Vette history is a “Factory Shop Order” ’67 Sting Ray coupe that was built especially for super Corvette salesman Bob Wingate, and was discovered and restored by Bob Radke.


“Factory Shop Order,” or FSO, was a Chevrolet ordering code system used for one-offs and special builds for V.I.P.’s that was used along with the Regular Production Option (RPO) code system, as this particular midyear had a few regular-production options on it, like an M20 four-speed, J50 power brakes, A85 shoulder belts, A01 tinted glass, N14 side exhausts and a U69 AM/FM radio. It also had an L71 435-horse 427 specified, but that—per Bob—likely had some “special attention” paid to it before it was installed at St.Louis Assembly.

FSO cars differed from COPO (Central Office Production Order) cars in that they were one-off builds, instead of the multiple-units-optioned-identically that the COPO process used to outfit fleets for cop shops, taxi fleets, county road commissions and state highway departments, etc.

It was that long chat on the phone that I had with Bob Radke that made the bad stuff from earlier in the day fade into the background, much as a slower car on a fast road fades into your rearview mirror once you get on the loud pedal and pass.

You’ll be seeing some of the info that I got from Bob during that chat, as well as other info and photos (including a bunch of historic ones) when that feature hits the newsstands in our November issue.

But I just wanted to tell you that—on a day that could bring out the Tony Soprano in anyone, a long chat about a historic Corvette turned my whole day around. Sort of like a handbrake turn in a ’67 Sting Ray!