For you Corvair fans

[steven c]

 Great vintage film shot at Lime Rock Park in Ct. Always liked the Corvair. Once they fixed the handling it was a really good car.
https://youtu.be/WmPpry8JiK0

[Tom]

Thx.

[Dean Rose]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eTGayn3Y800
https://www.hemmings.com/magazine/hmn/2014/08/1966--69-Yenko-Stinger/3741141.html

[chipdude]

My fam had two Corvairs when I was in high school.
My dad really liked them. I see the “off the beaten path “ similarities between Corvair owners and Guzzi owners. Glad to see others here have an interest

[oldbike54]

 Corvairs were alright until the engine fell out 

 Dusty

[jcctx]

Corvairs were alright until the engine fell out 

 Dusty

Such an event would even handicap a Guzzi????????

[oldbike54]

Such an event would even handicap a Guzzi????????

 True for sure Joe 

 The '65 Spyder that I owned for about 2 weeks was certainly fun , until the engine fell out about half way down Lombard Street in San Francisco  Guessing the rich folks in that neighborhood didn't let it reside there very long 

 Dusty

[wymple]

Corvairs were way ahead of their time. The main fault was that engine seals of the day weren't up to the task, thus the oil tossing about. Nader was a pawn, used by Ford. There is a fellow whose name I think is Wyman, who is considered the world's formost guru on homebuilt aircraft. His website had a list of 10 rewasons why you should use a Corvair engine over a Lycomings or Subaru. Corvair had forged everything, crank, pistons, rods. I had 2 when I was young, and bought one for my boys when they were in high school. They were different and required a Guzzi type personality to appreciate. Racers put Corvair engines in Porsches for the torque, they were called Porvairs. They've been modified for everything, airboats & such, even turned into outboard motors. As a younger guy, it was one of my favorite rides. I'd love to have one with a 3800 in the bay. I'm too old to start something like that, already got a Fiero set up that way.

[webmost]

Had a Greenbrier; then a Monza. Other'n the serpentine belt, great cars.

[Ncdan]

There was a turbo model produced which was a pretty hot little car. I have an old friend who has one.

[tcunnien]

Got my first drivers license with a 65 Corsa, red with a white convertible top. Learned how to balance carbs with the four one barrels and to always carry a spare fan belt. The belts did not like making the 90 degree turns from the crank to the cooling fan. Also perfected how to leave rubber marks on the road when accelerating.   

[guzzisteve]

A classmate from HS was eyeballing the mid engine conversion that a speed shop had sitting on the floor. He saved & saved until he bought it!! What a car w/327 in back seat. Real Fast at the drag strip too, something you don't see every day.

[Bud]

    After seeing that promo I'm surprised the army didn't pick some up!

[drdwb]

Thanks for the memories,My older brother had one of the Turbo charged Monza Spiders dark Maroon with white convertable Top. That was some car. Alas during one icy winter ride home while waiting at a stop sign a fully loaded fuel truck couldn’t stop in time and barely bumped the back end, the engine dropped to the pavement, thus the end of the hot Corvair, proving Ralph right,UnSafe at any speed. At times when we thought we knew how to improve the handling we would load the trunk with a couple 50lb sand bags to improve cornering, we thought it helped, but on the Northern Mn - North Dakota border near Grand Forks there are very few curved roads test the theory. 2 months before its demise an AirForce pilot had offered my brother $800.00 for the car,which was just about double what he had paid for it. Of course he kept the car,live and learn.
Fun thanks
Dave

[Rusty goose]

I had a '64 Monza Spyder 150 turbo convertible, should have not let it go.  Then had a '67 Monza convertible 110 then later a 140 in it, should not have let it go either.  The last was a '66 Monza coupe, Crown conversion.  A 365 hp 327 ci where the rear seat used to be, I'm still not mature enough to own that car.  It was the right thing to do to let that one go.  The only car I have ever owned that could pull the front wheels off the ground.

[gentlemanjim]

I had a '64 convertible, mom had a '65 coupe got me back and forth to college.  Looking back a real cool car (not by todays standards)  Wouldn't mind tricking one out with todays modern upgrades bigger wheels, forced induction, suspension.

[Rough Edge racing]

 In the 1970's I daily drove a 66 Corvair 4 carb Corsa for about three years...It was fun and handled very well compared to the other cars of that era.....The first generation Corvairs were a handful in an emergency situation to most drivers used to the understeering handling of typical US cars...

  This is a GM film from the early 60's on Corvair handling..it's long but you can skip around ....

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6sMXCEgAJg

[Sheepdog]

Nader's hatchet job on the Corvair delayed the development of fuel-efficient autos in America by ten years. A friend's older brother drove a really sharp Monza in the early seventies that I inspected at every chance. The vans were cool, too...definitely more power than their VW counterparts.

[Aaron D.]

The world's largest dealer of Corvair parts is not far from me-there's a picture of Mr. Nader in the building! He may actually have one on display.

I also met Mr. Nader's first-maybe only -biographer. Interesting stuff. I am pretty darned sure Ford had nothing to do with anything related to the Corvair.

[Rough Edge racing]

 Nader's famous book only had one chapter on the Corvair. Nader was/is a safety nut often with incorrect facts...But the cars back then were not designed for safety in an accident ...And when consumers were offered seat belt and padded dashboards at extra cost(1956 Ford), they declined...... GM was always a target because they were the largest car manufacturers by far back then...GM was was accused by our gov't for purposely trying to destroy the passenger rail system in order to sell more buses..GM was a leader in bus sales from the 40's-70's and the charges were maybe partially true... In 1959 GM was dragged before the Congress to face monopoly charges..It seems GM had 60 percent of new car sales...The buyers weren't forced to buy GM vehicles and that was the truth...

[Brand X]

Most people have not lived until they have experienced a moment in history with a Corvair.. Like the time we put out a fire with a six pack of tall beer cans. (through a small hole in the firewall) Then pushing the 63 Monza out of the field, while the Fire truck circled the place looking for us..  

[ohiorider]

My good buddy and his wife owned a 1964 two door coupe.  Standard Transmission (can't remember if it was a 3 or 4 on the floor.)  A fun car to drive, but I believe this model was built prior to factory suspension items that better-stabilized the car.  Like VWs, Corvairs of the period would seriously oversteer.

My first Corvair ride as a passenger was in a first year model, owned by a friend's older sister.  He wanted to show a carload of us how well it cornered, so he wailed really fast into a turn that was slightly less than 90 degrees.  Things were going well until the independent swing axle sort of doubled under the car, and lifted the rear end high in the air momentarily.

The only other car I ever saw jack up the rear end in a fast turn was a buddy's Fiat X 1/9 at a parking lot autocross.

[Chuck in Indiana]

There is a fellow whose name I think is Wyman, who is considered the world's formost guru on homebuilt aircraft.

Uhh, no. He's been building and selling Corvair conversions for many years, though. It makes a decent, relatively inexpensive powerplant for a homebuilt aircraft. Better than a Lycoming? Shirley  you jest.

[Dean Rose]

I had a '66 corsa 140 hp with 4 one barrels. What a great car!

Made many Porsche drivers go home and cry!

:-)

I had one too, great car.

Dean

[Lannis]

The only other car I ever saw jack up the rear end in a fast turn was a buddy's Fiat X 1/9 at a parking lot autocross.

Renault R8s and R10s had independent rear arms that would do that EXCEPT Renault provided a couple of very heavy canvas straps that prevented the axles from going too far afield ....

Lannis

[ohiorider]

Renault R8s and R10s had independent rear arms that would do that EXCEPT Renault provided a couple of very heavy canvas straps that prevented the axles from going too far afield ....

Lannis

I remember while in college in the 1960s .... a good buddy of mine and I could get as absorbed in a JC Whitney or Warshawsky catalog as we could our textbooks when cramming for finals.  That kind of activity usually brought a B down to a C, or worse.

Those old catalogs had special sections for VW and Corvairs, as well as Model A Fords.  In addition to dual carb kits for VW, and a bunch of other stuff, I recall the transverse single leaf spring they offered for VW and Corvair.  Pretty simple device ..... it sort of linked the right and left swingaxles so they couldn't roll up under the car.

[rodekyll]

VW famously added the "Z" bar to their swing axle beetle in '67 to reduce the dreaded "tuck-under" They somewhat solved the problem without add-on bits when they went to the open axles in '68. 

[wymple]

Uhh, no. He's been building and selling Corvair conversions for many years, though. It makes a decent, relatively inexpensive powerplant for a homebuilt aircraft. Better than a Lycoming? Shirley  you jest.

Better because it cost 1/3 to do, made the preferred HP and torque at the preferred RPM all day long. Everything has a flaw, Lycoming's was price. When I was reading up on it, the Corvair was a 5K build, the Lycomings ran 15K. The fact that Corvair was in the mix is impressive. As to the handling, there were rally clubs all over Europe for them. If you do the research, you will find that Ford staged a fixed handling test with Nadar present, to use him as a tool. And in my entire life I have never seen an engine fall out of any car, let alone a Corvair. And I'm old. I have seen an engine cradle sag from rust & broken bolts. There is this, fron Wiki....

A 1972 safety commission report conducted by Texas A&M University concluded that the 1960�1963 Corvair possessed no greater potential for loss of control than its contemporary competitors in extreme situations.[24] The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) issued a press release in 1972 describing the findings of NHTSA testing from the previous year. NHTSA had conducted a series of comparative tests in 1971 studying the handling of the 1963 Corvair and four contemporary cars�a Ford Falcon, Plymouth Valiant, Volkswagen Beetle, and Renault Dauphine�along with a second-generation Corvair (with its completely redesigned, independent rear suspension). The 143-page report reviewed NHTSA's extreme-condition handling tests, national crash-involvement data for the cars in the test as well as General Motors' internal documentation regarding the Corvair's handling.[1] NHTSA went on to contract an independent advisory panel of engineers to review the tests. This review panel concluded that "the 1960�63 Corvair compares favorably with contemporary vehicles used in the tests [...] the handling and stability performance of the 1960�63 Corvair does not result in an abnormal potential for loss of control or rollover, and it is at least as good as the performance of some contemporary vehicles both foreign and domestic." Former GM executive John DeLorean asserted in his book On a Clear Day You Can See General Motors that Nader's criticisms were valid.[28]

Journalist David E. Davis, in a 2009 article in Automobile Magazine, noted that despite Nader's claim that swing-axle rear suspension were dangerous, Porsche, Mercedes-Benz, Tatra, and Volkswagen all used similar swing-axle concepts during that era.[29] (The handling of other rear-engine swing-axle cars, particularly the Volkswagen Type I and II,[30] has been criticized as well.) Some contend that Nader's lack of an automotive engineering degree or a driver's license at the time he wrote Unsafe at Any Speed disqualifies him as a critic of automotive safety.[31] In response to Nader's book, Mechanix Illustrated reviewer Tom McCahill tried to get a 1963 Corvair to flip, at one point sliding sideways into a street curb, but could not turn over the vehicle

[Aaron D.]

Dunno about you but all those swing axle cars had a reputation for oversteer at awkward moments. Many had a fix applied by the maker.

I doubt any had a wheel "tuck under" and that includes Corvairs-but the real killer for the Corvair was GM. They weren't selling well.

[Rough Edge racing]

 Didn't WV eventually go to a trailing arm double u joint suspension like the 65-69 Corvair? Old beetles were known for flipping over and seeing them with wrinkled roofs from a slow speed rollover was not all that uncommon... My 66 Corvair was designed to understeer with a stock front swaybar. Quick turns at low speeds had the front end running wide, the tires scrubbing off speed like a Ford...When doing autocrossing, the front bar links were removed so the car would go to oversteer and be faster on the tight track.A Posi rear differential also helped to bring the ass around..At higher speeds on the road, oversteer can be a handful, especially with the Corvair slow steering..