Here's what I can add on this car and some of the questions / comments above:
1. This is a real Z16, no question about it. It has been on the Registry list for decades.
2. Dave Miner restored the car a few years ago. The restoration is featured in detail on the Registry website that Dave started (and that I now maintain since Dave passed away) -
http://www.z16chevelle.com . The resto links are on this page:
http://www.z16chevelle.com/Z16%20Red,%20Black%20vinyl%20top.htm There's lots of great info in those resto pics!
3. That is a real Z16 engine (it's just from a different Z16). And that is how all of the original, real Z16 pad stamps look. In fact, this one is neater than lots of them are! On my unrestored Z16 the last 2 or 3 digits of the VIN all overrun on top of the Tonawanda assembly stamp, and the last one is almost half way off the edge of the pad. The sloppy hand stamps were due to the fact that Tonawanda put the assembly stamp on the water pump side of the pad, and the big threaded plug in the head interfered with the application of the VIN stamp on the other side of the pad at the Kansas assembly plant. Somewhere between late March and late April of 1965, Tonawanda moved the assembly stamp on 396's to the exhaust side of the pad to eliminate that problem, so that the VIN could be stamped on the water pump side of the pad (like 66's are). I have not yet been able to pin down exactly when that change occurred.
4. Based on everything I've seen (including the trans tags on three unrestored Z16's), there was no Z16-specific transmission used in production. A special trans was proposed during engineering of the Z16's, and a part no. was issued (one digit higher than the regular 65 Muncie M-20 part no.), but it was dropped before production of the Z16's began. This is all shown in the revision notes in the assembly manual. The ACES magazine published a list of Muncie part no's awhile back that included the defunct Z16-specific part no., and that has led a lot of people to make the same mistake that is made in this eBay auction. There's even a company selling repop tags on eBay with the Z16-specific part no. that was apparently never installed in a Z16 (or any other Chevelle)!
5. On Dale's comment on the body number, as always you have a good eye! :beers: But it is legit. We have almost all the surviving Z16 body numbers in the internal Registry database. They jump up and down as you go down the list and very many of them are not in the same sequence with the VIN #'s. From the pattern of the body numbers it looks like the Kansas Fisher body plant may have built batches of Z16 bodies and shoved them aside, then pulled them back out (in reverse order) to feed to the car assembly line as Z16 units were scheduled for shipment. And there are several verified real cars that seem to be WAY out of sequence. With the uniqueness of the cars (which includes some structural body parts that are completely different from regular coupes), it may be that they had some production issues or mistakes that made some bodies get sent back through the loop for repairs or corrections, in which case they could have gotten pushed aside a second time and delayed even more.
6. This particular car is much more stunning in person than it is in the pictures. I really would have loved to buy it from Dave when he sold it, to have a "before" version (see the link in my signature below) and an "after" version of identical cars. But my money tree must have had a fungus since it could not not produce nearly that much $$$$$ when I needed it!!
