<VV> [FC] Corvair Research

[ScottyGrover at aol.com]

In a message dated 4/30/2008 6:16:35 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time,  
lmartino1 at verizon.net writes:

Thank  you for responding.  My son is working on a "Engineering  Disasters"
project for his high school engineering class.  He was  assigned the Corvair
as his "disaster".  We are having difficulty  finding any technical
information about the "problem".  He needs to  cover what was wrong, why it
happened, what the solution was, etc.  I  know that this wasn't an
engineering disaster but I don't want him to get  too caught up in the
politics and miss the real lessons of the  project.  He is getting "Unsafe
..." and at least one other book but I  think he needs some good info on the
suspension and other components.   I personally haven't read Unsafe and am
not sure what detail is  there.  I will see if your book is available
locally.  Any info  you can provide would be very much appreciated.



I read "Unsafe at any Speed" and, on the basis of the distortions and  
outright BS, rented a Corvair for a business trip (about 250 miles.) On the  basis 
of that drive, when next I bought a car, it was a Corvair, and I've driven  
nothing but 'Vairs for many years.  He'll have a hard time finding anything  
wrong; most, if not all of the trouble with the early models (which was the only  
'Vair when Nadir wrote the book) was that the car WAS different than what  
drivers were used to and they didn't bother to read their owners' manuals; tire  
pressure was different and if the owner put the same tire pressure in the 
front  tires as in the rear tires, he was in trouble for sure. For that, there was 
no  real solution except educating the drivers (darn near impossible) or 
having them  swear off Corvairs and go back to something familiar.  The late 
models  improved on the earlies (the earlies were designed as economy cars--it 
wasn't  'til a few years later that they got their "sporty" reputation and the 
lates  were so well-handling that they could be raced in sportscar competition 
with  little or no changes, except maybe stiffer shocks .)(Those cars were 
called  "Yenko Stingers.")
 
Scotty from Hollyweird



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