The Chevrolet Corvair | Vintage 

Best cars GM ever made. I've owned every make and model they made except for the motor home and the station wagon. Got a 66 Monza 140 coupe now .Built it from the ground up. Love it.

You would think that a man hates corvairs that badge wouldn't want nothing to do with it or never mind seeing one in his garage that's a odd thing to do if you hate them why are you wanting one ralph nader was and still is a nut.a saftey looney tune .i had a 2.7 liter turbo 4 speed it was no slouch if a person tries hard enough he can flip anything Mr nadder didn't know much about what he was talking about.people who still have corvairs love them and like to keep them now there a huge club for them he tried to kill the little car but it didnt work there rare and cool.ralph nadder can go and suck. A egg I drove mine hard never flip it ever

If you hate something that bad why would you want one.when Hadid that all.his credibility was gone hes ben dismissed years ago as egsadurater no one cares what hes says any more hes a problem person

+1!

Right on! Thanks for sharing. Hopefully you will have this in your garage one day too.

That sounds like one heck of a car, and we'd regret selling it too!

+William Krutt Take a look at Ernie Kovac's death car and read an account of the wreck, then tell us how stable they are.

Cars stability are always effected by drunk driving and wet roads. Kovacs had left a party, had been drinking and was driving at a high rate of speed. I guess Porsches, Mercedes and other makes are highly unstable too. Just look at all the other makes of cars that many celebrities have died in,

The stability depended a lot on the tyre pressure, though. Not something ordinary people look after every week.

You're right. I forgot about that. If I remember correctly, the front and rear tire pressures had different recommendations. Plus, it was also presupposed that the driver wasn't going to drive it like a Formula Racer, and use common sense. I owned the Corvair "Monza" and I wish I had it back. It was a quick little beast on the straightaway.

A lot of it had to do with the fact that American drivers had never experienced a rear-engined car and didn't respect the car's completely different handling characteristics. But it's true that the first four years of production had a very primitive suspension that could sort of catapult the car if conditions set up the wrong way. The camber could change drastically if the car bounded into a dip or something, and if combined with throwing the car into a turn without being aware of the inherent oversteer, it could be disastrous. I read that the early Corvairs handled badly for the most part because the engine came out quite a bit heavier than Chevy had planned for, so all the potential for these problems really appeared when they released the car with the primitive suspension. The late model was completely different. I had a '66. It handled almost neutrally, and it was very predictable, and a sweet thing to drive. The fully independent rear suspension brought the car closer to something like a Porsche, although I've always thought the comparisons with Porsche were kind of ridiculous.

Should have read the "Owners Manual', that would have save your bacon in the first place.

Thanks for letting us now!

A "Yank tank"......priceless! Is that Australian slang?

The Tucker was hardly the first rear-engined production car, that arrangement goes back to the dawn of the automobile. "Modern" RR cars were developed in Europe beginning in the 1920s and both the Tatra 77 and Mercedes-Benz 130H predate the Tucker by 15 years.

southshore516 You are correct - I should have been more specific that the Tucker was probably the first post war American rear engine car that was more than a one off experimental. There was even a car w/ a rear air cooled radial engine made in the late teens or early 20s (one at the old Harrah's collection) but there was only that one or maybe two made - there are always exceptions. Glad you mentioned Tatra. At the time, Tatra was probably the most advanced rear engine car (or front engine for that matter!) ever made. Shame they were never exported to the US in any kind of number, if at all, officially. There is a car museum in/near Nashville Tennessee that has 23 of them - most in the world except in the Czech Republic.

southshore516 Going back even earlier to the horseless carriage days, the rear engine placement was probably more popular than front engine. The Curved Dash Olds introduced in 1901 was one such car. However, with the engine under the seat it technically could be called a mid-engine car.

Lest we forget the Volkswagen. I remember my aunt driving one when I was a boy. Was it perfect? No, it was as basic as one could get. All it had were seat belts for the driver and front seat passenger, a heater, and a radio. But it drove in just about every weather and temperature imaginable. :)

Jason Carpp Of course. But the Bug wasn't built in the US and we're specifically talking about cars built in the US. The Corvair was Chevy's answer to the Bug. That's why it was rear engined and air cooled and compact and cheap by American standards. But it wasn't as compact and cheap as the Bug, which is why the Bug didn't ever get shut out of the American market.

He was wrong in that. It was 80 to 180 horsepower. The late-model Corsa with the turbocharger produced 180 horsepower.

Pre-'65 the HP rate was 150 @@bretfisher7286

mrcsdavj: I understand that. That's not what he said. I'm correcting him.

He is correct, there is a Corvair in the Toyota museum. I own a '65 Monza convertible.

Corvair 1960: Mustang 1964

+Vyk Vyper Wrong, the Corvair came out in 1960, four years earlier than the Mustang. The Corvair was built to compete with overseas cars especially the VW Bug.

Does anyone know please help

Daniel O Carey but the Tucker never went to production, it was killed off before it was started only built 50 cars so Tucker could qualified for it's plant in Chicago by the U.S. Government, it never officially open for business. also Corvair had a Boxer style engine (a flat engine) opposed cylinders it was a good car but Americans did not know how to handle them compared to the huge U.S. cars at that time.

Billy Pate The Tucker had a boxter engine too, although liguid cooled. It was an airplane engine. But I like Corvairs. I've had one Monza coupe, one Monza Spyder coupe and a Corsa turbo convertible. And the engineering is advanced even for today's cars in some areas of engineering.

The '59 you are making reference to was sold as a 1960 model. That is when Chevrolet 'introduced' the Corvair, not 1959.

"Corvairs had a 180 degree V-6" ........there was NO 'V' to them. I'll give you the 180 degree, but NO "V". Horizontal opposed (180), air-cooled, six. Or a boxer, but again NO "V" six. That's like saying the Chrysler "Slant Six" was an in-line or better yet a half twelve V-6.

I googled it for you. Maybe this will help you: corvaircenter.com/phorum/read.php?1,405446,405507 /mw

thank you again let ya know how it goes

It's difficult nowadays to understand just how enormous GM and it's market share were in the 60's. The fact they considered 1.8M a failure really puts it in perspective.

+CHUUMPASS True. the Beetle was in fact a very bad car. My father owned several, and it was not that realiable even. The handling was even worse, but that did not matter in ordinary driving, though.. Worst was, it had a bad heater and NO equipment, the fuel economy was bad, and still it was not cheap. The only good things about it were, it was easy to work on because of simplicity and they did not rust as fast as the competition did.

Olds beat it by 2 weeks and did not last as a successful turbocharged car. The olds suffered much mechanical gremlins and the turbo was dropped. The Corvair turbo while primitive did succeed and was kept in production for 4 years starting at 150 and later 180hp. So, it was he first SUCCESSFUL production turbo charged car.

Both the F-85 and Corvair first appeared in 1962, however with so many problems, the Oldsmobile Division of GM dropped it.

nine? I mistake correct is nice.

All you can do with understeer is slow down. If you control the oversteer with throttle, you drift.

Since you mention the NHTSA and Ralph Nader, you must know that Ralph Naders claims on the Corvair were debunked by the NHTSA in 1972. They found no propensity for roll over or loss of control on the corvair. They did find the Renault and VW bug did. These tests were done at Texas A&M by the NHTSA at Naders urging and they were proved false. The Corvair is the only car of date to be declared "Safe" by the NHTSA. Thought you should know these facts.

+Flat6 All true. But still a 30/70 weight distribution is not good for Joe Average. And Joe Average drives it, so any mass produced car shoud fit Joe Average. This one did not, and was thus not well engineered. However, just because of that, the car fascinates me. Pity it was never sold in Europe (except in Switzerland).

Excellent response to the above poster. In 1969 I turned 16 and begged my older brother to send me the money to buy a car. That was in March and he was in Vietnam at the time by "request" of Uncle Sam. He sent me a money order for $1,000 and I went shopping. I ended up buying a 1965 Corvair. Red, two door, three speed on the floor, four cylinder. Pretty much stock as I remember, its been 47 years. I paid $600 for it ("saving my brother 400 bucks!). I never had a accident with it, never slid off the road, never rolled it over. None of the things Nader said they did so often. If a sixteen year old kid, as green as grass, could buy one and drive it for I don't remember how long without incident they couldn't have been that unsafe!!!

They never made a Corvair with a four cylinder as you say yours was.

Wrong on all counts.

You really don't know what you're saying. The Corvair was indeed one of the most reliable cars on the road in it's day. And it remains one of the most structurally sound cars ever built. Here in the USA some Corvairs are used as daily transportation. In fact in Erie, Pa there is a man that has owned nothing but Corvairs since 1961. He drives them 15-20,000 miles a year. And it really is prettier than the VW bug.

Bull crap. You might like the Beetle, but the Corvair was safer. larger, and reliable.

Bull crap indeed. As an owner of multiple corvairs who even drove them cross country multiple times, they were darn reliable. Start up and go in northern weather. Handle well if you know how to drive. My recollection of bug engines is they needed to be rebuilt regularly. There is an abundance of BC in some of these comments.