Unsung heroes: Chevrolet Corvair

Unsafe at any speed?

Today's unsung hero is the first American car in the series and another controversial choice. The Chevrolet Corvair is often cited as one of the worst cars of all time and ranked alongside such other disasters as the Edsel and the AMC Pacer, but was it really that bad? Yes, its reputation was ruined (unfairly as it turned out) by a best-selling book that condemned it as an inherently dangerous car, but the Corvair was actually very revolutionary for an automotive industry that had become set in its ways and reluctant to innovate, and inadvertently created a whole new market sector that was keenly exploited by other manufacturers. I think it deserves a reappraisal and here I present the case for the defence...

Is it really fair to call this one of the world's worst cars?
(By Charles01 - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27794784)

American cars of the fifties and sixties followed a very simple pattern that hadn't changed since before the war: a huge sedan with a water-cooled engine, at the very least a straight-six but more commonly a V8, mounted in-line at the front of a separate chassis and driving the rear wheels, usually through an automatic gearbox. The brainchild of General Motors Vice-President Ed Cole, who took inspiration from the aviation industry, the Corvair was a radical departure from the norm with its monocoque construction, swing-axle suspension and air-cooled flat-six fitted at the back. It was the first rear-engined American family car since the ill-fated Tucker Torpedo, an unexpectedly brave and innovative development for one of the 'Big Three' manufacturers and completely unlike anything else in GM's huge range.

Something unprecedented from GM, Corvair styling looked very European
(from www.cargurus.com)

Although inspired by the massive success of the Volkswagen Beetle and initially intended to compete in the same market sector, the Corvair wasn't really comparable, being a much bigger and more powerful car. While still very large to European eyes, by US standards it was a small vehicle and fitted into the emerging compact class alongside such cars as the Ford Falcon, Chrysler Valiant, Rambler American and Studebaker Lark. Rear engines were popular in small cars but with the notable exception of Tatra had seen very little use in something of this size, so the Corvair's layout was unusual even outside the USA and set it apart from the competition, which were basically scaled-down versions of conventional full-size cars that weren't remotely innovative.

Tatras were the closest European equivalent of the Corvair

Launched in October 1959 as a 1960 model, the Corvair was powered by a 140 cubic inch (2.3-litre) flat-six made largely of aluminium and from 1962 was available with a turbocharger in the sought-after Monza Spyder model, a little-known first for a production car that is often credited to BMW or Saab. At first it was offered in two-door coupe and four-door sedan forms with very spartan trim, and these would be joined by short-lived station wagon and commercial variants, plus a convertible as it developed a sportier image. Initial impressions were positive and Motor Trend magazine declared it their car of the year in 1960, but sadly for all its innovation the Corvair didn't sell particularly well. It was just too different and not what compact car buyers wanted, and that was before it hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons.

Not a great success as a station wagon but it found a niche as a sporty car instead
(By Josephew at the English language Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5717541)

It may have failed to fulfil its original intention as an economy car, being too radical and expensive for budget-conscious motorists, but the Corvair instead managed to create a new market sector almost by accident. The high-performance Monza model proved to be an unexpected success that uncovered a hidden demand for small sporty cars that were fun to drive, and from then on the Corvair would be repurposed as a sports coupe for driving enthusiasts while the conventional front-engined Chevy II took over as the mainstream budget compact. Ford's introduction of the immensely popular Mustang was a direct response to the Corvair and spawned the 'pony car' genre that Americans know and love, so if it wasn't for the Corvair Monza none of these cult cars would exist. Ironically, while this granted it a stay of execution the Corvair would eventually become a victim of its own success in the very market it created as the flat-six didn't have the power to compete with the V8 Mustangs. Chevrolet thus developed the Camaro to replace the Corvair, a true pony car that was largely a Mustang clone but became an icon in its own right.

The pretty second-generation Corvair emphasised its performance credentials. This the range-topping Corsa.

Much like the Morris Marina, the Corvair's undoing was Chevrolet's decision not to spend a few extra dollars on fitting a rear anti-roll bar. It was a budget car after all and the all-new engine had already pushed development costs too high, so from a purely financial perspective this made perfect sense. This oversight would be corrected on the all-new Corvair that debuted for the 1965 model year, which became the first American car with fully-independent suspension and had much better handling than its predecessor that all but eliminated the tail-happy behaviour at the limit. It was too late though and the damage had been done as the poor reputation of the early cars was starting to hurt sales, so within a year GM had decreed that there would be no further development work and the Corvair would soldier on with only minor changes until 1969  That is a shame really as the second-generation Corvair is a very good looking car. Styled in-house by Bill Mitchell, it looks quite un-American and could pass for the work of an Italian coachbuilder with its sleek unadorned coke-bottle lines, the very antithesis of the excessive fins and chrome of the fifties. Looking at the Corvair, it's very clear where Vauxhall got their inspiration from for the FD Victor.

The handsome FD-series Vauxhall was effectively a smaller front-engined Corvair in looks

Of course, the Corvair cannot be discussed without mentioning the elephant in the room: Ralph Nader and his infamous book Unsafe at Any Speed. The Corvair was the main target of Nader's crusade to improve automotive safety and he claimed it had critical design flaws that made it a "dangerous, ill-handling car", which in truth was something of an exaggeration. While swing axles in rear-engined cars did have a poor reputation, as evidenced by the Nazi party banning their officers from driving Tatras after a number of fatal accidents, the first-generation Corvair's handling wasn't actually that bad provided the tyres were kept at the recommended pressures, advice a lot of owners ignored. Ultimately it would be vindicated by a federal investigation that proved it to be no more prone to loss of control than any other car, but this came too late to save it as the report wasn't published until 1972, by which time the Corvair had been gone for three years and its bad reputation had made it into popular culture.

Ralph Nader - the man who killed the Corvair
(By Thomas J. O'Halloran, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7730846)

Yes, the Corvair had some serious problems to start with, not least because the engine turned out much heavier than anticipated and cost-cutting made the rear suspension inadequate, but these were ironed out in later models and objectively it doesn't seem as bad as it is often made out to be, particularly in post-1964 form. It lasted ten whole years and nearly two million were built, which may be disappointing by American standards but actually means it sold in much greater numbers than many supposedly more successful contemporary European designs. If it wasn't for the Corvair we would probably never have seen the Mustang or any other pony cars, so it left an important legacy that isn't fully appreciated.

It's not obvious there's an engine in the back

The main reason for the Corvair's infamy is not so much its own failings but the furore caused by Ralph Nader, who arguably blew things out of proportion and did a huge amount of damage to General Motors' reputation. In some respects, the Corvair is actually not unlike my beloved Maxi, an innovative and potentially world-beating design ruined by cost-cutting and poor execution that finally came good when it was too late, but in this case with the added burden of a barrage of negative publicity. For being so revolutionary and proving that the usually-conservative American Big Three were still capable of innovating and willing to take a gamble on something very out of the ordinary, I think the Chevrolet Corvair certainly doesn't deserve its place among the worst cars ever made and is more of an unsung hero than a total disaster.