Homeward from Vegas I70 Closure I discover a Corvair Tri-State Meet in Glenwood Springs, Colorado 

That cut away is so cool

Growing up, our family had a 64 Monza convertible (110 / 4sp), later on I had a 66 Corsa convertible (140 / 4sp). My Mom worked at a tire store and was given a free set of Michelin radials, it was funny seeing mechanics shake their heads when my five foot and a bit mom tried to tell them the tires weren't flat. ;-D

I actually have a friend who owns a half dozen Corvairs. I will share your video with him.

For decades hot rodders loved the Corvair front suspension for its compact and adaptable design, that's until the Mustang II came out with its disc-brakes, rack and pinion steering already installed.

I have a 64 Corvan 95 panel van with a 4 speed. It's a bit of an oddity in that it was privately owned so didn't get as beat up as most work trucks. It also came from NC which means it never got driven in snow, which is a major bonus to those of us who live in New England. Reading up on the history of the vehicle, it seems GM's original intent was to keep making the van beyond 1965 (final production) and they were going to update the rear suspension to something similar to the car, which had already moved away from the swing axle style. The original plans were to keep it through the 69 model year, but sales of the newer "full size" van were taking off. I parked next to one at a car show and the Corvan is at least a foot longer than the shorty version of the full size. Go figure! OTOH, the new style had wider back doors and you could slide plywood in there. Not so with the Corvan. (not easily)

Corvair owners are generally A. Odd Balls and B. Some of the nicest people around. My impression is that CO and NM have some of the most extreme of these. They have been trying to get me to join for sometime now in New Mexico. The problem is they are all so aged. And they'd be the first to admit it. It's fine folks like you that take the time to make videos like this and the one about the early 1960 that exposes the attributes of the wonderfully strange car. But what I think they should do is send Corvair mechanics to shop classes at high schools and colleges presenting the car for what it is worth. One wouldn't need to be flashy because, let's face it, the content would sell itself. In fact, you couldn't make this crap up. To me the problem is they maybe a bit underpowered fir the young ones that's why I rock a 140!

Mustang had nothing to do with the demise of the Corvair. It was actually an internal struggle at GM as some peeps were a bit peeved at the Corvair outhandling Corvettes and Camaros. People tried to kill it off in '64 but GM was committed to producing it through '66. You are right about the last 3 years of production being due to GM dissing Nader:) What scared some peeps at GM about the Corvair was the plans for a flat 8 engine that would be in the 300hp territory and that got nixed real quick. Electric Vairs were even tested by GM back in the mid '60s. They even made a 240hp overhead cam test engine that revved easily to 7k rpm without effort. All this in a light Vair would have killed the Vette it was feared. As Zuntoov and his buddies were having a big mouth say-so in what was to be, they managed to kill the Vair. I went looking to buy a new Vair in '70 and found out they were no longer produced. They tried selling me other cars but I wasn't interested at the time.

I read somewhere that someone did wind tunnel tests on the two generations of Corvairs and found that the first style was "slightly" more aerodynamic (how much?)

Video was very shaky and hard to watch. Just to let you know. Otherwise very cool stuff. Thanks