Hello, There were plenty of things we liked and disliked about my wife’s 62 Corvair. The "like" was the shiny rear chrome bumper. And, it was paid off... yes! The other thing was that it was designed to be the so-called “America’s Porsche… or such a label…) The design parameters were there. The build was looking rather good and the first ones hit the scene and did make a big splash with a lot of new car buyers. Our next door neighbor in the Westside of Long Beach wanted a cruiser. But, of little money he had saved, he opted for a new car, so upkeep for the high school years would be minimal, although he was a good mechanical type teenager. His idea was that with his afterschool job, he could afford to buy a “new” car instead of a used one. Used big cars like a 4 door Impala hardtop model for 1960 was expensive and out of his range. So, with the style of a 4 door more to his tastes, he opted for a new Corvair 4 door sedan. That new 4 door Corvair sedan was very reliable and got him where he wanted to go. Certainly, it was not a powerful v8 motor, but it fit his needs just fine. He had one idea, he wanted to lower it like some of his other friends’ older sedans. But, when 4 of his friends all got in the 4 door Corvair, it was now a “lowered” cruising sedan. Those stock springs were not the most heavy duty items on the stock models. Jnaki So, he was a happy camper, and still had the 1960 Corvair 4 door sedan by the time I had met my wife and moved away from Long Beach, years later. Wouldn’t you know it, but my wife’s first car was a 1962 two door sedan in almost the same color blue, but with a little silver in the mix. She bought it used, from a neighbor who lived several door away in the big OC area near Knott’s Berry Farm. She used it primarily to go back and forth to her senior year of high school and to the first two years of college about 35 minutes drive away toward the Belmont Shore area of Southeastern Long Beach. On rainy days, she always drove the El Camino and I was the primary driver of the 62 Corvair. The good thing was, it got good gas mileage, but was a small car. The biggest problem was that when it was raining for several days, care had to be taken when going through a deep corner puddle or across an intersection that had dips for drainage and the water lever came up to the rims. On many times of me driving through a deep puddle, the water came through the lower inside vent openings, near the floor. So, being closed should have solved the problem. It slowed down the incursion of water, but it still came inside. Now, the floor being dropped lower than the sill was a laughing matter. Before the road trip home, the water was sloshing back and forth inside. It took several days and nights with a large fan and heater blasting to get it dry, after draining the standing water. What a mess. Note: In 1968, after my wife and I got married, we drove two cars, the red 65 El Camino and her blue/silver 1962 Corvair that was her first car from high school. One day, she had business in metropolitan Los Angeles near Pomona. We had just gotten married and were looking for another car to replace my wife’s 62 Corvair Coupe. She drove it as far as it would go, I did as much mechanical stuff as I could, yet, it remained on the sell list. After getting stuck on the San Bernardino Freeway interchange, near the Los Angeles City Hospital in East LA, the reliability was in question and my wife was in a scary location. She called me from a public phone…remember those? The orange vested Cal Trans guys stopped when they saw a silver blue Corvair stuck in the narrow center divider. A 20 something girl pops out and asks for help… that could have led to plenty of scenarios, but for us, it was all good. Those nice guys said to leave the Corvair there and they would take her to the nearest public phone at the hospital. So, she went with them and called me to come and get her + the Corvair. We did not have time to sit there and guess at what was taking place to make it so “awful.” (her words back then). So, it sat outside our apartment, while we were in the “looking stage” for a newer car for her daily driver. I drove up there as fast as I could and found her at the telephone booth near the General Hospital. She said that her Corvair was running fine as she drove to catch other freeway interchange home. All of a sudden, it just quit in the fast lane. "FAST LANE" Yes, fast lane... ha! She could not accelerate, there was no power. So, she pulled over in the narrow median area. What luck. But, in those days, there was no cell phone service. So, she waited for me to arrive. What? We had a planned thing when one of us was going to an interview or photo shoot. After the assigned situation was over, we would call the other person to say we were coming home. If I knew the location, I knew the time it would take to get back to our apartment. (in the Corvair, her driving or my El Camino.) Note 2: We got it fixed, it ran fine, but in the back of our minds, it was not going to be "get in the car and feel reliable to drive anywhere or to those night college classes." So, when we were approached by her uncle, he was in need of any vehicle at low cost, we gave him the Corvair with the promise to have him pay us later. He did not, but, by then, she was driving the 1965 El Camino for her anytime driver... Or, the 327 powered 40 Ford Sedan Delivery project car, after it got the complete rebuild or repair to make it drive/stop correctly...YRMV
Unique picture here, only because the famed Sox & Martin team only ran a Ford Corp. car this year 1964. They ran Chevrolet's prior and Chrysler Corp. cars afterwards. This was a factory sponsored car thru a Mercury dealer in Greensboro, NC. It was a 1964 Mercury Comet 427 cu.in high-riser engine car that ran A/FX class, early years of transitioning to the funny car years. They pickup Chrysler corp. sponsorship in 1965 and remained with Mopar’s thru the '70s until somewhere in the mid '80s IIRC.
The Jalopy Journal
