This is where our Chevy tunes review gets fun, because no one made muscle and drag car songwriting into a reality like the West Coast’s surf-rodders of the early-to-mid ’60s. Jan and Dean’s “Dead Man’s Curve” became part of the decade’s hot rod culture’s consciousness, and no one has forgotten about the rod and muscle classics that they and the Beach Boys helped to make famous.

Prince wasn’t the first artist to ever sing about a ‘Vette, and in fact the surf rockers did it many years before him. “Dead Man’s Curve” told the story of a Sting Ray and an E-Type going head-to-head, but Brian Wilson and the gang followed suit in June of 1963 with their own Sting Ray operetta, “Shut Down.”

The story of “two cool shorts” revolves around a “fuel-injected Sting Ray” and a “413.” This epic drag race scene is stereotypical of the time, and as the speaker’s “slicks” start to break loose, we can’t help but sit at the edge of our seats, wondering who’s going to take the Winner’s Circle.

The second generation of Vette, one that was the first to make the sports car into a brute piece of small and big-block muscle, saw several changes in terms of styling and drivetrain. It was the C2 that was the first generation of Corvette to be stuffed with Chevy’s potent 427, and consequently the face of America’s sports car would never look the same.

It’s no wonder then, that America’s most famous band of surfer/songwriters celebrated the Vette marque, even over the likes of Dodge’s most radical Super Stock creations!