Chevrolet Corvette 1964 Convertible

Only 1,325 of the 22,229 Corvettes Chevrolet built for 1964 left the factory with the L84 fuel-injected 327 under the hood, and fewer still survive as numbers-matching convertibles. Owners Bob Atkins and Fred Haraf have kept this silver-on-black example since 2011, and they know exactly what separates a genuine fuelie from a car wearing the right badges and nothing else. Read on to find out what makes this 375-horsepower Sting Ray one of the rarest combinations Chevrolet ever built.

There’s a specific kind of quiet that settles over a car show crowd when the hood pops on a genuine fuel-injected C2. Everybody there knows what they’re hoping to see: the Rochester mechanical injection unit perched on top of the 327, the setup that separated buyers who wanted a fast Corvette from buyers who wanted the fastest Corvette Chevrolet would sell them. Only a fraction of 1964 buyers checked that option box, and fewer still held onto the car long enough for someone to still be telling its story six decades later. This silver convertible has both things going for it: the right engine under the hood, and owners who genuinely know what they’re sitting on. So what does it actually take to own one of the rarest Corvettes of its era?

The Option Almost Nobody Checked

Chevrolet called it the L84, but everyone who cared just called it the fuelie — a 327 cubic inch small-block fed by a Rochester mechanical fuel injection system instead of a carburetor, squeezed to an 11:1 compression ratio and rated at 375 horsepower with 350 lb-ft of torque. It cost 538 dollars extra in a year when that kind of money bought a lot of car, and most buyers passed. Chevrolet built 22,229 Corvettes for 1964, and only 1,325 of them left the factory with fuel injection under the hood — a number that shrinks further once you account for how many were convertibles rather than coupes. That rarity isn’t trivia for collectors; it’s the reason a fuelie Corvette gets a longer look at every show it rolls into, and it’s also why so many casual buyers who could have had one at the time simply didn’t see the point of spending extra on an engine that demanded more careful tuning than a standard carbureted small-block.

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How the Fuelie Stacked Up Against a Carbureted 327

Chevrolet also offered the same 327 block with a single Holley four-barrel in the L76 configuration, rated at 365 horsepower — respectable, but ten horsepower and a fundamentally different breathing strategy short of the L84. The fuel injection system metered fuel more precisely across the rev range, which meant sharper throttle response and less of the flat spots a big four-barrel could suffer under hard acceleration. For buyers chasing bragging rights over outright practicality, that difference was worth the extra cost, even if most dealers steered customers toward the carbureted car simply because it was easier to service, and easier to explain to a buyer who just wanted a fast car without learning a new maintenance routine.

Numbers That Still Hold Up Six Decades Later

Road testers of the era ran the fuel-injected 327 to 60 mph in 5.6 seconds and through the quarter mile in 14.2, with a top end north of 130 mph — figures that would still embarrass plenty of modern commuter cars, let alone anything else rolling off a dealer lot in 1964. Paired with a four-speed and a 3.73 posi rear, this wasn’t a car built to look fast sitting still. It was built by people who actually raced, for people who actually would, and the gearing reflects that priority over comfortable highway cruising.

A System With a Reputation for Trouble

The Rochester mechanical injection earned a reputation almost as complicated as its performance was impressive — the unit required careful tuning and was notoriously finicky compared to a simple four-barrel, which is a big part of why so many original units got swapped for carburetors over the decades whenever an owner grew tired of chasing a stumble or a hard start. Surviving cars that still wear their factory-correct fuelie setup, unmolested and correctly tuned, are scarcer today than the original production numbers alone would suggest.

Why Convertibles Command a Premium Over Coupes

Every Corvette buyer in 1964 could choose between a hardtop coupe and a convertible, and the drop-top has always carried a premium in the collector market — open-air Corvettes simply draw a bigger crowd at auction, fuel injection or not. Combine convertible body style with the L84 option and a matching numbers rear end, and you’re looking at one of the genuinely scarce combinations from an already-limited production run, which is exactly the kind of car that turns a routine show stroll into a longer conversation.

The Mid-Year Corvette’s Place in Chevrolet History

The 1964 Corvette sits early in the Sting Ray generation that ran from 1963 to 1967, widely regarded by collectors as the most cohesive styling era the Corvette ever had — clean lines, hidden headlights, and a chassis that finally matched the car’s performance ambitions after a decade of the earlier, softer C1. A fuel-injected ’64 represents that design language at its sharpest, before bigger big-block options started reshaping the car’s priorities later in the decade.

What a Numbers-Matching Fuelie Sells For Today

Genuine, documented L84 convertibles with matching numbers routinely draw six-figure bids when they cross an auction block, a price that reflects both the engine’s rarity and the labor-intensive nature of keeping a period-correct fuel injection system running correctly. Cars with incomplete documentation or replaced components sell for meaningfully less, which is exactly why serious buyers insist on verifying casting numbers and trim tags before writing a check.

The Right Owners for the Right Car

That’s what makes owners Bob Atkins and Fred Haraf the right custodians for this one. These aren’t first-time Corvette buyers who stumbled into a fuelie — they’ve owned several C2s over the years and know exactly what separates a numbers-matching survivor from a car wearing the right badges and nothing else underneath. They’ve had this silver-on-black convertible since 2011, which in the collector world is long enough to know a car’s quirks, not just its spec sheet.

Keeping a Sixty-Year-Old Fuel System Alive

Owning a fuelie today means owning a relationship with a specialist, not just a mechanic — correctly rebuilt Rochester units and NOS or reproduction parts aren’t sitting on a shelf at the corner auto parts store, and finding someone who genuinely understands the system’s quirks takes some searching. For owners like Atkins and Haraf, that extra effort is exactly the point: a fuelie isn’t just a rare option code, it’s a piece of Corvette history that demands to be maintained the hard way.

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