I've had 7 of them. My favorite was a 66 Monza 900 that someone stuffed a nicely warmed over 140 engine in it (4 carbs). What was great was the way I was able to toast a bunch of V8 cars with it. Especially one guy who pulled up in a good looking 55 Chevy truck saying "Hey that's a good looking Vair... too bad it has a crappy pancake 6 in it". At the next light, he was speechless and looked like he had no clue what just happened after I completely wasted his ass. My friend in the car with me laughed about it for days. I love them too and would love another one but they're too small for my taste. I've been spoiled with Impalas. Maybe with this $3/gallon of gas deal going on though... And yes Nader is an assmunch. On top of all the BS he puts out, HE HAS NEVER HAD A DRIVER'S LICENSE!!!!!! He's one of those people where I think if he died tomorrow it'd be OK because it's one less idiot for the world to feed. Travis
Maybe the part about it being a joint design between Porsche and Gm has something to do with it. Of course GM did fuck with the design against Porsche's wishes....
My wife had a '65 Corvair Corsa ragtop w/ the 180 hp turbo. Fun little car. The Corvair had two generations, the 60-64 and the 65-69. It was born in the mini-gas crisis of 1958, when the Big 3 started reacting to growing import sales with compacts like Tempest, the Chevy II, the Falcon. The first generation 'Vair had a swing axle design (lifted directly from Porsche) while the latter had full IRS. The charge in "Unsafe at Any Speed" was that the swing axle rear (coupled with low tire pressure) caused understeer at high speed cornering. GM documented it in early track testing, but considered it a negligible risk versus the cost of upgrading to IRS. Nader, at the time a young liability attorney, was one of the first lawyers to see the big $$$$ potential in class action suits against 'deep-pocket' corporations like GM. He used a test suit to subpoena GM's internal safety testing documents, and revealed the shocking - shocking! - truth that GM actually made tradeoffs between product safety and production cost. Not withstanding the fact that a perfectly safe car would have a top speed of 4 mph, be covered in marshmallows and cost $100,000, juries ate up Nader's jive. GM eventually tossed him a few million to go away. The negative PR and changing consumer tastes caused GM to pull the plug in '69. Nader used his GM windfall to start the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), essentially a hippie do-gooder front organization for the product liability class action lawsuit industry. These are the folks who are currently suing McDonalds because they hypnotize helpless parents into feeding cheeseburgers to their fat kids.
Many Corvair owners sought to balance the cars by installing some weight up front usually by tossing some sand bags in the spare well. Don't forget the Turbo Charged versions! I still want one of those. When the Vair was introduced there were lots of oddball imports available to the American car buyer. Renault had rear engine coupe that looked very much like a Vair called the Targa Florio NOT the miserable Dauphine! NSU, DKW, Daf, Borgvard, Saab, Fiat, Simca and so forth plus a ton of micro cars. Isetta, Heinkal, Messerschmidt. Stuff that would never have a hope in hell of getting into the states now. Death traps every single one. It was an interesting reshuffling of the automobile technology deck of cards (to mangle a cliche!) A respinning of the automotive rolodesk! Most of these makes eventuallly left the US market due to emissions and safety legislation. I think the Vair was competing with these vehicles but as they succumbed the Vair next faced the conventional domestic "compacts" (remember that term?) and Americans were less and less interested in "different" by the mid 60's. Fickle Americans. Plus the design flaw and safety and Nader making his bones. Ralph Nader une fortuto essere connivente colpire alle spalle donnola cornuto!
OK, I will admit to coming home and throwing a bag of speedy-dri in the trunk of my '63 Spyder after the first time I went 110mph in it!
HAd nothing to do with the car, Mickeys Malt, and coming out of a cloverleaf at 90 had more to the roll.
Actually they would have pulled the plug in '66, but GM produced it for 3 more years, some say as an act of defiance... From http://www.corvair.org/vairhistory.php Corvair sales for 1966 were down by more than 50% and Chevrolet decided to cease any further development. Production and sales continued for three more years, perhaps to display corporate confidence in the Corvair. By 1967, Chevrolet was selling the Camaro (its own Mustang-fighter), as well as the compact Nova and mid-size Chevelle. From http://www.leftwatch.com/archives/years/2000/000070.html The result was the creation of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The only problem was that the NHTSA itself concluded that the Corvair models Nader spent an entire book lambasting were in fact just as safe as other models of car made during the early 1960s (in fact today the Corvair has a relatively large following among sports car enthusiasts). Nader's assertions that GM knew the Corvair was more prone to rollover accidents than other models was directly contradicted by NHTSA data which showed that the Corvair was no more likely to be involved in rollover accidents than comparable models.
The Targa Fiorio was a Race in Italy. Do you mean the Renault Floride?( pic ) Under the pretty bodywork that car was a lot like the Dauphine, the Renault Alpine A 110 was too ( second pic ) . That one might have been nicknamed Targa Fiorio, for doing well in that race. Just like the '63 and 64 Ford Falcon Sprint V8 are called Monte Carlo's sometimes, for doing well there... ( 3rd pic ) Millions of miles were traveled in Rear Engined Swing axle cars. Sure the design has its limitations, but cars with this layout have been very succesfull in many types of Racing. Which to means to me they were at least at the same level as other cars that were being sold at the time. I did most of my Racing in a Fiat Abarth 1000 TC. ( 4th pic ) I had it on 2 wheels lots of times. Probably more because of good quality sticky slick tires, than a wheel tucking under. The last 2 pics are off an other Abarth, and a NSU TTS on two wheels. You can see the outside rear wheels on those are not tucked under... I'd rather drive any of those Cars fast than a topheavy SUV. Yeah...We made a lot of progress...
That's a still from the movie Sin City. Yes, Corvairs are (and can be made even more) awesome. As to Ralph Nader: just because he's a self-promoting jackass doesn't mean he wasn't right. Cars used to be terribly unsafe. The Corvair was only one part of the book. He also singled out 55 Buicks for all the sharp pointy things sticking off the dash. Without seatbelts, if you run into something, they make nice daggers. He admits in the book that the Corvair is most tippable when the tire pressures aren't right. And specifically, early Corvairs are prone to rolling when they run off the road and try to quickly get back on (or when thrown into quick left-right-left maneuvers like a slalom) while running incorrect tire pressures. His larger point was that it was irresponsible for GM to require such precise monitoring of the tire pressures to ensure the safety of the car. Yeah, we're all diligent about shit like that, but most people aren't. And as loathsome as I can see many of you guys find old Ralphie, his book was a significant factor in making cars a hell of a lot safer. Like a kid, sometimes it takes a little kick in the ass to get a major corporation to do the right thing, not just the easy or profitable thing. As some of you have pointed out, the Corvair was later exonerated of its tendency to roll over at a higher rate than other cars, but talk to any Corvair enthusiast (or even someone who owned one back then) and they'll tell you the early cars can be a little tricky under hard braking or at the limit of cornering. They like to oversteer, e.g. swing around on you, so you end up going ass-end into the bushes. Does that mean they can't be made to be excellent handlers? Of course not--there are plenty of racers out there to prove it. Would I like to have one? Hell yeah!
"I'd rather drive any of those Cars fast than a top heavy SUV. Yeah...We made a lot of progress..." The Renault used all the mechanicals from the 'Dopefin' I made my Corvair top heavy!!!AND like it like that....putting the motor where the bags of sand were
Targa Florio/ Renault Florida. I see where I went wrong. Yes that is the car. Looks so French, oui? Plus 3 lug wheels! Zut alors! The Dauphin is considered to be the Very Worst Car of all time by many, many people. "Whenever I have thoughts about erecting a giant pin to impale a tiny car that can be illuminated by spotlights at night it is the Renault Dauphine I think of first." (Text taken from advertisement for the 1959 Renault Dauphin- Courtesy of Batten-Barton-Durston and Osborn)
Yeah, thats what I thought. But I didn't feel like looking it up... Funny that people only remember this type of design because of the Roll Overs. The things that bothered me about cars with that design is the fact that the Front Wheels hydroplane easy in the rain, and that the Turn In tends to be kind of soft. But at the same time this type of design can give phenominal braking power, and superior traction on the driven Wheels. BTW, nice 'vair Bluto...
metalshapes is always good for some crazy euro racing pics from the 60's and 70's...have anything of a racing 4cv renault. or a DAF? but while we are lambasting corvairs (jk) you guys should research the "Yenko Stinger"...
This is the Olds powered DAF that was built for the English Super Saloon Races... No pics of racing 4CV's... But how about this Twin 4CV powered Hillclimb Special?
yes they should... http://www.calconnect.com/cars/66yenko/66yenko.htm http://www.corvaircorsa.com/berkman01.html http://www.corvaircorsa.com/yenko01.html
My wife had a early 4 dr. I rember playing with it in fresh snow you couldnt spin the wheels i tried to get it stuck and couldnt.Also had a 55 chevy and drag raced a friend with a turbo model He burnt my 265 bad,Embrassing as hell but another frend with his dads new valuent slant 6 burnt me too.but the 55 was wore out oil burning plug fouling but at 15 years old I thought i was cool. Hell I had a v-8 and just knew them 6 cy couldnt touch me.Made me respect a 6.
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