- What's the fuzz about this car really? What makes it the most
influential car ever made? There is an english car journalist Quentin
Willson that is known from BBC and (at least) two nice books about cars.
The BBC has a automotive program called Top Gear, and in late 1997
Quentin did a ~5 min story about the Corvair, which ended with the words
above, despite that the picture he portraited wasn't very Corvair-friendly.
Anyway, in the late '50s Chevrolet decided it needed a small, easy-to-make
and "european type" modern car. It should be "an american VW Beetle". So
Chevrolet engineers designed the Corvair which started to sell 1960. More
background is available on the Link page The Corvair Story.
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Things started nicely with this new excellent innovative car, albeit people who were used to large V8s upfront found it strange with a air-cooled flat six in the rear. Ford Falcon is another example of these first american compact cars. A later is Ford's success with the Mustang.
Then a couple of accidents happened with the Corvair. People managed
to make the car roll over. Lawyers saw a chance for money and started law
suits against Chevrolet. In total 294 cases. A at the time not-so-well-known
person made a career on writing a book Unsafe at any speed, which
became a bestseller. This was Ralph Nader. Press was terrible against Chevrolet
and the first lawsuit resulted in 70.000$ to the "victim". A number of
trials then started, Chevrolet won all of them, in total there was 9. The
car wasn't the problem.
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But damage was already done.
Chevrolet wasn't really smart at the beginning either, they hired private investigators to see if they could come up with any discrediting information about Nader. Was he gay or liberal or even a communist? A interesting parallel is about the Mercedes A-class and the now world-famous moose avoidance test and the Swedish journalist Robert Collin from the automotive magazine Tekniken Värld. This didn't make things easier for the Corvair. In 1964 a stabilizer was fitted, due to pressure from media, which was interpreted as the car had some design flaws.
In 1972, 7 year from Naders book and 3 years from the last Corvair rolled
of the lines the Federal transport department concluded that there was
nothing wrong with the Corvair, its handling was no different from any
other car of the era. GM tried with the redesigned 1965 Corvair, but that
did not help either. In 1969 only 6.000 Corvairs were made and Chevrolet
lay down production. The last was a beautiful Gold colored Monza Sport
Coupé which left the factory May 14th 1.30PM.
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The most influential car ever made? This was the car that started the process in governmental bodies all over the world to make rules around just about anything involving cars. Rules about crash safety, handling, fuel-emissions etc. The industry didn't look the same after the Corvair.
I have a 1963 without the stabilizer and its handling is excellent. God, how stupid things can get when lawyers, journalists and writers starts to incite each other. The real issue totally disappears! And the best judgment of all is that maybe up to 300.000 Corvairs of a total of 1.650.000 built is still driven. That's the verdict!
