Hemmings Motor News Blog

1961 Corvair was the family car we had when I was born and still had that car when I graduated High School.

My Dad took a '65 volkswagon van, cut it down to nothing but the chassis and built up from that a buggie that looked similar to the VW Thing made from 16 guage aluminum sheet metal pop riveted to an 1-1/2" x 3/16" angle iron frame. Yes it was heavy, it had on it big tires with a very high clearance and it was rear two wheel drive. He put on it a corvair engine and that vehicle could go just about anywhere. It had no roll bar and was open top and would climb hills and where dune buggies with roll bars would roll over backwards, and these hills were about 300 feet high. We drove over terrian followed by 4x4's and the 4x4s would turn back. Those corvair engines had power and they could stand the abuse. Flat 8 cylinder engines.

Ralph Nadir destroyed their reputation by using them as an example for the lack of safety in automobiles. It wasn't that the corvair was the worst, it just happened to be the one used as an example, VW was going to be his first choice of example but VW paid him off. So ol' Ralphie has a price.

Corvair was never an 8 cylinder. 6's only, from 85 to 140 HP, all in 110 cubic inch or thereabouts, displacements. And THEN there were the mods like Yenko Stingers, and such. But CORVAIRs never had 8 cylinder engines in any stock configuration, and no CORVAIR 8 cylinder was ever designed for production, or produced.

I had only one, and it was the Monza 4-door (I understand it was THE most produced model of all engines) but did a lot of research on them, because I loved them. My wife learned to drive on ours, and now tells me she has no problem with me finding and acquiring one, as long as mine is the SECOND one we own then, cause she gets the first one.

But I agree. They went where nothing else would, in conditions where nothing else would. I often made the first tracks in the snow on the highway in the morning, then found mine were the ONLY tracks in the snow at the end of the day, coming home.

They did corner "funny", though, due to the loose-coupled suspension tightening up at the entrance to a curve. That little shift before the tightness took over took a lot of my passengers by surprise. I think the unsprung weight of that engine hanging out behind the rear axle contributed a lot to that.

But Ralphie (Nader) confined his comments, for the sake of his own agenda, and very deliberately, to the "Earlies" (60-63) which used a "live axle" rear-end, and ignored the improvements in handling in the "Mids" (1964), and even greater improvements in the "Lates" (1965 -1969, the last year of maufacture), when Chevrolet took them to a semi-independent, and then a fully independent rear suspension. And even my Mid ate several Datsun 240's and 260's on the local twisty roads, just because of a bigger engine, and better handling (240's were trucks, but 260's were tanks, for handling).

You're right. I don't know why I had it stuck in my head it was 8 cylinder.

When I was too young to drive, but old enough to have discovered cars, there were two brothers that worked id their father's Pizza place near me. The older one bought a 63 409 4 speed. the younger bought a turbo Corvair. It was only after the '09 got re-cammed and headers that that the Corvair finally had to admit defeat. Short stoplight to stoplight racing was an everyday thing.

The 69 Corvair was GM's only car without steering column lock.

I saw a 67 Monza with a fiberglass engine cover in the back seat area, once. It had had a 426 Hemi installed for power, and the cover extended forward to provide driver and front seat passenger seating, with the engine appearing to have been installed AHEAD of the transaxle, so that it was a true mid-engine. I don't have any idea what kind of transaxle they used, though I'm certain even Chevy couldn't make the Corvair transaxle handle that kind of beef.

Unfortunately, and perhaps inevitably, it had been in a fire, and from the look of the body work, that had resulted from, or caused, but certainly had been part of, a major wreck, so that there was nothing left worth trying to resurrect. I found it in a junk yard, where it appeared to have been sitting for a LONG time. But it was an interesting thought to consider how it might have been to drive a monster like that.

Of course, growing up in CA (USA) gave a kid a lot of opportunities to see crazy project cars like that. One can only hope the builder/driver/passenger survived it.

Crown engineering sold conversions to install giant Oldsmobile engines into Corvairs. They used the Tornado drive-train. If you could hold onto it, it had to be spectacular. Try to picture a Corvair with the rear side windows blacked out, with a mild exhaust, and maybe a little too much tire on it. Pure sucker race.

Always LOVED those sleepers. "Run what you brung" could never be more fun. Or productive.