Cargolex
1963 Chevrolet Corvair Monza
For those unfamiliar with it, the Chevrolet Corvair was conceived by General Motors as a response to the increasing popularity of cars like the VW Beetle, Renault Dauphine, and Hillman Minx in America. A smaller, lighter car, it had a rear-mounted flat six, just like a Porsche 911. GM’s bold experiment, led by engineer Ed Cole, who was General Manager of Chevrolet at the time and would go on to be GM’s President, failed – but not for the reasons most people think. And said failure had a profound impact on GM’s willingness to take risks with car designs thereafter.
The Corvair was later maligned by Ralph Nader as being “Unsafe at any speed” in his book of the same name. In truth, the Corvair handled pretty well for a rear-engined car (rear-engined cars were not uncommon in the 1960s). Nader’s book did expose some glaring issues with automotive safety, but the main claim of the book – that the Corvair was a death-trap, really wasn’t true.
Instead, the Corvair failed because it was just too strange for most American car buyers, who flocked to the rival Ford Falcon, a much more conventional car. The Falcon was basically a scaled-down traditional Ford, front-engine, straight-six, rear drive – and the Corvair was something totally different from any American car that had come before it other than the Tucker. It’s unconventionality did not serve it well - it was too big to appeal to the same folks who wanted VW or a Renault, and too unusual to appeal to many buyers who wanted something smaller than a traditional Detroit car but had a more conventional car in mind. Furthermore, being rear-engined, it was unable to grow past its design origins, as other American “compacts” did in the 1960s, evolving quickly into popular mid-size cars that could be had with larger and larger engines (giving birth to the 1960’s Muscle cars). The Corvair could not accommodate larger engines, and after Nader’s book, also bore some public taint from Nader’s accusations.
Chevrolet would never again take such a big risk on a popular car – the reaction to the Corvair made the corporation much more risk-averse when trying new engineering ideas, particularly in an era when the traditional solutions (bigger engines, conventional cars) worked just fine.
In 1963, when this Corvair was built, the car was still selling fairly well (129,544 Corvair Monza coupes were sold that year) – almost at the same level as 2-door Falcons. By then, Chevrolet had introduced the similarly-sized Chevy II (later called the Nova), a conventional answer to the Falcon, which was eating into Corvair sales. 1963 would be the high-water mark for the 2-door Corvair which, despite a slick restyling for 1965, would never again equal that sales total in a single season. The car soldiered on until the last one rolled off the line in April, 1969.
©2014 A. Kwanten
1963 Chevrolet Corvair Monza
For those unfamiliar with it, the Chevrolet Corvair was conceived by General Motors as a response to the increasing popularity of cars like the VW Beetle, Renault Dauphine, and Hillman Minx in America. A smaller, lighter car, it had a rear-mounted flat six, just like a Porsche 911. GM’s bold experiment, led by engineer Ed Cole, who was General Manager of Chevrolet at the time and would go on to be GM’s President, failed – but not for the reasons most people think. And said failure had a profound impact on GM’s willingness to take risks with car designs thereafter.
The Corvair was later maligned by Ralph Nader as being “Unsafe at any speed” in his book of the same name. In truth, the Corvair handled pretty well for a rear-engined car (rear-engined cars were not uncommon in the 1960s). Nader’s book did expose some glaring issues with automotive safety, but the main claim of the book – that the Corvair was a death-trap, really wasn’t true.
Instead, the Corvair failed because it was just too strange for most American car buyers, who flocked to the rival Ford Falcon, a much more conventional car. The Falcon was basically a scaled-down traditional Ford, front-engine, straight-six, rear drive – and the Corvair was something totally different from any American car that had come before it other than the Tucker. It’s unconventionality did not serve it well - it was too big to appeal to the same folks who wanted VW or a Renault, and too unusual to appeal to many buyers who wanted something smaller than a traditional Detroit car but had a more conventional car in mind. Furthermore, being rear-engined, it was unable to grow past its design origins, as other American “compacts” did in the 1960s, evolving quickly into popular mid-size cars that could be had with larger and larger engines (giving birth to the 1960’s Muscle cars). The Corvair could not accommodate larger engines, and after Nader’s book, also bore some public taint from Nader’s accusations.
Chevrolet would never again take such a big risk on a popular car – the reaction to the Corvair made the corporation much more risk-averse when trying new engineering ideas, particularly in an era when the traditional solutions (bigger engines, conventional cars) worked just fine.
In 1963, when this Corvair was built, the car was still selling fairly well (129,544 Corvair Monza coupes were sold that year) – almost at the same level as 2-door Falcons. By then, Chevrolet had introduced the similarly-sized Chevy II (later called the Nova), a conventional answer to the Falcon, which was eating into Corvair sales. 1963 would be the high-water mark for the 2-door Corvair which, despite a slick restyling for 1965, would never again equal that sales total in a single season. The car soldiered on until the last one rolled off the line in April, 1969.
©2014 A. Kwanten