1965 Chevrolet Corvair - Beautiful at Any Speed

In my very humble opinion, the first Chevrolet Corvairs, those manufactured between 1960 and 1964, might as well have been props from a 1950's sci-fi movie. Although...in fairness, I do like the roof line on the coupes but the rest of the car looked like something straight out of "The Thing From Another World". 

The four door sedans were even worse. That backwards ball cap of a roof may have worked on an Impala but on a smaller canvas, much like the over styled and under sized "Valiant by Chrysler", it's just awful. Look, this car is so ugly even the models in this ad can't stand to look at it. Especially in pea soup green and oh, those fat white walls. That these cars had air cooled engines mounted way out back made them even more bizarre. Remarkably, it's said that this design was inspiring to European car designers. Go figure. 

All was forgiven, though, with GM's reimagining of Corvair for 1965. Just like that and incredibly so considering what came before it, what had been a jab in the eye was suddenly the belle of the ball and probably the best looking thing Chevrolet had to offer in 1965; high praise considering how handsome most of GM's lineup was that year.  These Corvair coupes are so elegantly simple and gorgeous, I can almost look past the engine in the trunk thing. Almost.

While Corvair's rear engine, rear wheel drive layout allowed for a nearly flat floor thus giving the diminutive car an abundance of interior room, it also meant that Corvair had an inherent propensity for understeer. Understeer is a phenomenon when an automobile's rear end swings out and over takes the front in turns. It's practically impossible in a car with its engine in the front and is rear wheel drive; same goes for front engine, front wheel drive cars. Possible? Sure. But really difficult to do especially on dry roads. It's the opposite of oversteer where a car continues to go straight after the steering wheel is turned right or left. Some refer to oversteer as "plowing". 

Although GM's redesign of Corvair for 1965 included a rethink of the suspension, the debut of the updated car coincided with the release of Ralph Nader's seminal tome on automotive safety; or the lack thereof on cars so at the time in the United States and The Big Four's arrogant reluctance to even offer safety belts in vehicles. In the first chapter Nader indirectly points to Corvair's understeering when he referred to the car as a "one car accident". 

What exacerbated the 1960-1964 Corvair's propensity to understeer was GM's stunning decision to not equip the car with an anti roll bar to offset extreme changes in camber in certain turns. What's more, all '60-'64 Corvairs employed a semi-independent, swing-axle design which lacked a universal joint at the wheel/hub end of the axle. Excessive camber change, again during very extreme cornering, could cause the rear wheels to tuck under and trigger a spin. GM changed the design of the suspension to a fully independent design for 1965 but Corvair's tailpipe was cooked. 

Despite the changes GM made to Corvair for 1965 that made it a much safer if not excellent car, public sentiment as a result of "Unsafe at Any Speed" dropped Corvair sales by half from 1965 to 1966. 

What's more, although Corvair remained in production through 1969, GM brass ordered no further development on Corvair after 1965. That was due in part, no doubt, to Nader's book but also since GM was developing two cars simultaneously to compete with Ford's game changing Mustang which, ironically, is said to have been inspired by the Corvair. 

Although "Unsafe at Any Speed" made the Chevrolet Corvair infamous, it lead to sweeping changes in automotive safety and the establishment of the Department of Transportation and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in 1966. Meanwhile, most if not all of the 1965 Corvair's design cues, particularly its luscious "Coke bottle" styling, found its way onto a number of GM designs in the late '60's and early '70's. That being said and with tongue firmly placed into fender, it's safe to say that the 1965 Corvair was "Beautiful at Any Speed".  

It's been concluded that all rear engine cars, which are not to be confused with "mid engine" cars where the engine is literally in the middle of the car, are, again, inherently prone to understeer. In the right hands understeer can be handled quite easily and in auto racing it's advantageous. However, in the wrong hands even the best of rear engine cars can be dangerous.