<VV> A breath of fresh air..

[Secular]

  If Lee Iacocca hadn't invented the pony car... if Ed Cole's R&D guys had 
  just spent a little more time (make that money) ironing out the rear 
  suspension... if the grapevine hadn't done such a complete job of 
  overblowing the things the R&D guys overlooked or underfunded... 

  if a certain accident victim had been driving a Falcon instead of a Corvair 
  when he was killed in California in 1961... if this same unfortunate teenage 
  driver hadn't had a lawyer as a stepfather... if this gentleman's law partner 
  hadn't set his sights on a career in auto accident damages litigation, with 
  Corvair mishaps being his main focus... if Connecticut Senator Abraham 
  Ribicoff hadn't decided to put a feather in his congressional cap at the 
  expense of supposedly unsafe American cars like the alleged 
  consumer-killing Chevy.

  And if Ralph Nader had only grown up wanting to he a fireman. If, if, if...

  Although initial deficiencies were soon fixed beneath Chevrolet's innovative 
  compact and the cars name eventually cleared in court, the Corvair never 
  quite recovered from its early troubles. Despite claims to the contrary, 
  Chevy's rear-engine wonder was reasonably safe at most speeds, 
  yet the public had made up its mind, as had GM officials, who as 
  early as April 1965 already were spreading the word to cease 
  any future development work on Cole's uncon­ventional compact - 
  this about six months before pioneering consumerist Nader's first 
  big whistle-blowing work, Unsafe at Any Speed, was published. 

  As it was, designers by then were busy developing GM's answer to Ford's 
  wildly popular Mustang, and it was a foregone conclusion that the Camaro 
  to come would more or less take the Corvair's place in Chevy's product 
  pecking order. So it Was that the last Corvair rolled oil the line in May 1969.
  Plain and simple, this little breath of fresh air deserved a better fate...

  Source:

  American Horsepower - 100 years of Great Car Engines
  By Mike Mueller 
  Chapter 13 - Page 94
  First published in 2006

  ----

  Tony Irani