[Verne_Frantz]

Larry,

First of all, I haven't tracked the Corvettes at all. All my data is strictly focused on the full size cars. At any rate, it's my understanding that the pre-production pilot cars were built at only the one or two "lead" Fisher Body plants. Once the tooling was verified, I'm not quite sure how that information was transfered to the other plants. However, in the case of the Vettes, since they were only built at St. Louis that year, I would feel pretty confident that St. Louis did the pilot car Vettes.
Aside from paper work to validate that, I would encourage you to seek out other low VIN '65 Vettes (probably not an easy task) and compare equipment and date codes. Let's say Vette #15 had parts with dates about 2 weeks prior to the calculated final assembly, but your car had parts with dates 2 months prior, then I'd say you have a pretty strong case that your car might have been one of the pilots.
Since Corvettes only had two body styles, I doubt they built that many pilots, even if they needed to test assemble a variety of options. Strictly educated speculation on my part, but I doubt St. Louis built 11 pilot Vettes. I'd hate to think it took them that many to get it right!?! At any rate, I feel confident that your car was not the 11th to roll off the line.
You might also want to check to see if there are any "'64" parts on your '65. I recently had the fortunate opportunity to thoroughly go over a '64 Impala Super Sport convertible which was a pilot car. Body number 2 (perhaps #1 didn't quite meet spec?), VIN#6. This car had a '63 steering box, wiper motor and tach harness. The car was built two months prior to production launch. This car was originally built as a 4-speed car, verified by the original engine number, cowl tag and paper work - then dismantled and reassembled as a Powerglide car. Original owner history has verified the car was delivered new with the automatic, and I've found many traces left behind of the original 4-speed set-up that the plant didn't bother to remove. So, in that case, they saved the time and cost of building an additional pilot car only to establish the assembly methods of an automatic SS.

Larry, your Vette might still hold some undiscovered secrets.................!

Verne.