Corsair

Posted on June 19, 2013 by mikethemadbiologist

They don’t make them like this anymore (observed on Hereford St., Back Bay, Boston):

Corsair

The interior:

Corsair

The bumper:

Corsair

The front end–and, of course, a parking ticket:

Corsair

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4 Responses to Corsair

  1. Gary Florczyk says:
    June 19, 2013 at 12:10 pm

    Corvair not Corsair. Remember “Unsafe at any Speed”?

    • anthrosciguy says:
      June 19, 2013 at 1:35 pm

      Yes, and I remember that Nader’s description of the Corvair’s problems were overstated. Plus what he said that was accurate also applied equally well, perhaps even more so, to the VW Bug, btw do you remember his spending any great amount of time in an indictment of that car? That very popular car? no.

      Too bad about the Corvair. In its latest incarnation it had a terrific rear suspension (as the later VW Bugs did too) that addressed any safety problems it could have. The problems it did have then were several: it used a convoluted fan belt that tended to break due to being forced to turn 90 degrees; an electric fan would’ve cured that. It should’ve had disc brakes, although the drum brakes it had were quite good. And that brings us to the biggest problem it had: corporate politics. The Corvair was brought out as an economy car, but it was better suited to be a sports car. But Chevy had a sports car, the Corvette, and the developer of the Corvette, Zora Arkus-Duntov, was very jealous about guarding that position and had a lot of clout within GM. If the Corvair had been given the electric fan and the Corvette’s disc brakes (which were fantastic for the period) it would’ve been a Porsche-killer for about half the price of a Porsche… or a Corvette. That didn’t sit well with Arkus-Duntov.

      If they’d also gone for a minor body reshaping, using one of the show car concepts they’d already worked out for the Corvair, the problem would’ve been worse from Arkus-Duntov’s perspective. (for instance: http://tinyurl.com/n8yydtl)

      So Nader’s book (which I commend in many ways for forcing both the car industry and the government’s hand on car safety, but was rather dishonest re the Corvair) became a convenient excuse for GM to kill the Corvair, first by removing the high performance options and so lower sales, then point to the sales decline as the excuse to finally kill it.

  2. joemac53 says:
    June 19, 2013 at 8:09 pm

    We used to make beach buggies of them with no mods. Low pressure in the tires and off over the sand you went. Same deal for VW bugs, but with wider tires than stock. I don’t think I ever drove a Corvair anywhere but the beach.

  3. noddin0ff says:
    June 20, 2013 at 8:41 am

    tacky air freshener in a convertible?

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