For those who do not know, Harley Earl is the designer of the original Corvette->ke1280. His design work, known as "Project Opel", began as a secret project. He first offered it to Chevrolet general manager Ed Cole and Cole, thankfully so, accepted the project without hesitation. Later, the car was offered to the public in 1953 as the Chevrolet Corvette. Well, Mr. Earl, obviously, was given a 1963 Corvette Sting Ray by GM and has kept it for himself for all of these years. Until this weekend when it was auctioned off to the highest bidder.

The 1963 Corvette Sting Ray was sold during the Mecum Original Spring Classic auction this past weekend for a whopping $925,000. A pretty impressive number, but a tad shy of the $1.3 Million reserve it had on it last year. We are going to go ahead and blame the economy on this one because there is no way a classic like this belonging to the designer could possibly have a decrease of interest.

The 1963 Corvette Sting Ray was powered by a V8 engine with an output of 250 HP. It made the 0 to 60 mph sprint in 5.4 seconds and was capable of a top speed of 152 mph.

The Corvette that used to belong to Harley Earl is metallic blue with custom blue leather seats and white trim. It has a stainless steel side-exit exhaust, knock off wheels, stainless steel door and foot well inserts, and special unique gauges including altimeter, accelerometer, inside/outside temp, and vacuum pressure. This hand-built, one-of-a-kind Corvette was auctioned off to ProTeam Corvette.

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