Two Corvettes Rank Among the Quickest Cars of the ’60s

By Tony Markovich - December 21, 2015

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The ’60s will forever be talked about as a magical super era of performance cars. Muscle cars were budding, sports cars were evolving, and everything was about power. This, inherently, makes for some of the most debated cars of all time. One way to eliminate debate when talking about a strictly specific aspect of cars is individually testing and recording data, like Car and Driver has been doing for decades.

That makes it easy to publish lists like “The 12 Quickest Cars of the 1960s,” which C&D did earlier this month (via MSN), which compares the top 0-60 times of the decade. Two Chevrolet Corvettes (and a Camaro) appeared in the rankings, the ’67 427 and the ’69 427. The ’67 came in 4th with a 0-60 time of 4.7 seconds. The ’69 tied for 12th with the ’68 Camaro Z/28 at 5.3 seconds.

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This is what C&D wrote about each car at the time:

About the ’67 427, in the May 1967 issue: “The Corvette has come a long way since it was introduced in 1953. In the beginning, the Corvette was a cute little two-seater. It sure enough looked like a sports car, but underneath the radical fiberglass bodywork was a puny 235 cu. in., 150-horsepower ‘Blue Flame’ six and a two-speed Powerglide transmission. Everybody laughed. Even Thunderbird owners knew they had something closer to a sports car.”

About the ’69 427, in the September 1969 issue: “One of the most extraordinary things about the Corvette is its overall smoothness. Most cars having an excess of 400 hp are jerky, neck-snapping, uncivilized, and bull-like, but the Corvette’s controls are so well designed that utter novices can jump aboard and drive like veterans—up to a point… Power comes so effortlessly that neither car nor driver is ever called upon to strain in the slightest.”

For the record, the ’65 Shelby Cobra 427 took the cake at 4.3 seconds.