4LT GS Roadster
#27 September 2006
Every Corvette owner thinks his car is one of a kind. Some are just one-of-a-kinder than others. Richard Prince met and shot the F&SO one-off in Los Angeles.
Way back when, in the days before lawyers, actuaries, accountants, and killjoys of other persuasions spoiled the fun, Chevrolet used to build one-off Corvettes for the rich and famous. On very rare occasions, they even made them for common folks.
Every Corvette owner thinks his car is one of a kind. Some are just one-of-a-kinder than others. Richard Prince met and shot the F&SO one-off in Los Angeles.
Way back when, in the days before lawyers, actuaries, accountants, and killjoys of other persuasions spoiled the fun, Chevrolet used to build one-off Corvettes for the rich and famous. On very rare occasions, they even made them for common folks.
It's not known how many of these "special-order" cars were made in all, but a good guess is about 25 to 50 per year from the late '50s through late '60s. The variations ranged from the extreme, such as the heavily modified hotrods built for execs like Harley Earl and Bill Mitchell, to the mundane, as in an otherwise-ordinary Corvette sent to a dealer in primer instead of paint.
Several different bureaucratic mechanisms could be tapped to get special cars built, the most common being a COPO—an acronym for Central Office Production Order. "Central Office" meant Chevrolet Division headquarters, so a COPO was tantamount to a directive from On High. A second method was via the SO, shorthand for "Shop Order." The relatively rare SO request could originate in a number of places, but most came from either the Chevrolet Engineering Center or Styling Studio. The third, even less-common, route was a variation called F&SO, believed to have originally stood for "Fleet and Special Order." By the time anyone started to care about such things, the exact difference between the SO and F&SO processes was more or less lost to memory. In general, historians are content just to say that their functions were similar.
After more than 30 years in the Corvette hobby, including various stints in Corvette-related businesses, I've crossed paths with a few dozen legit COPO and SO Corvettes. While not exactly falling out of the trees, there are enough authenticated examples of these one-offs around to paint a pretty clear picture of what does and does not constitute a true factory special. The same isn't true for F&SO Corvettes; these are so rare that the '67 shown here is the only convincingly documented example I've ever seen—an assessment shared by a lot of other Corvette professionals, too.
The tale of this Goodwood Green big-block begins all the way back in '55, when a strapping 18-year-old kid named Bob Wingate landed a job at Clippinger Chevrolet. The Covina, California dealership originally hired him on as a prep monkey, but he quickly worked his way up to salesman. From the beginning, Wingate focused on selling performance cars—and he was good. Pretty soon, Clippinger had forged a reputation as one of the two leading Chevy-muscle stores in southern California, the other being Harry Mann Chevrolet.
Wingate first came to the notice of GM's higher-ups in early '62, after he sent a letter requesting 100 new Corvettes for Clippinger. Considering Chevrolet only built 10,939 units the previous year, it seemed like a ridiculously big order for one dealer. Most of the white-collar guys had their doubts, but product-promotions specialist Joe Pike believed in Wingate and helped channel several dozen additional Corvettes his way. Wingate sold every one he could get his mitts on, making him far and away the highest-volume Corvette salesman in the nation that year.
The young phenom continued selling huge numbers after that, and by 1966 he'd shifted more Corvettes than any other salesman for five years running. The Division awarded him its coveted "Legion of Leaders" recognition, by which time Wingate's reputation reached to even GM's hallowed 14th Floor. (Reportedly, on being introduced to Wingate at an auto show, one Chevrolet general manager blurted out, "Hey—you're the Corvette guy!")
This semi-celebrity status created opportunities for Wingate that weren't available to other salesman. With a couple of carefully placed calls he could get non-conforming cars built for his favorite customers—Corvettes with trick wheels and tires, special colors or option setups, things like that. Wingate also began working directly for Chevy each summer, travelling the western US with Joe Pike and helping set up local and regional Corvette clubs and doing promotions at dealerships.
This semi-celebrity status created opportunities for Wingate that weren't available to other salesman. With a couple of carefully placed calls he could get non-conforming cars built for his favorite customers—Corvettes with trick wheels and tires, special colors or option setups, things like that. Wingate also began working directly for Chevy each summer, travelling the western US with Joe Pike and helping set up local and regional Corvette clubs and doing promotions at dealerships.
http://www.corvette-mag.com/art1/art1p1.html
Jane Ann
