Collectible Classic: 1960-1969 Chevrolet Corvair - Automobile
He was working on his car when someone drove up and asked him if he wanted to sell it. “I’ve bought and sold lots of cars since then,” Allen says. ’ ” This might be a surprise to many, as Allen’s old car was reviled by the 1970s as an engineering disaster, a menace to public health and safety. And yet Allen had found it to be a wonder of leading-edge technology, far more like a sports car than wannabe rides like the Chevy Camaro and Ford Mustang. The Corvair came from the imagination of the legendary Ed Cole, the Chevrolet chief engineer who led the design of the small-block Chevy V-8 for 1955, became general manager of Chevrolet in 1956, and then went on to become the president of General... His idea came to fruition as the 1960 Chevrolet Corvair, produced as a response to public enthusiasm for affordable, compact, fuel-efficient cars such as the American Motors Rambler American and Volkswagen Beetle. The car impressed with GM’s first Detroit-built unibody design and all-aluminum, air-cooled, flat-six engine (another first from GM). Yet the Corvair quickly acquired a reputation for troubled handling due to its combination of rear-biased weight... Ralph Nader’s “Unsafe at Any Speed” (1965) made the Corvair the poster child for what Nader called the car industry’s callous disregard for public safety in vehicle design. Source: www.automobilemag.com
