<VV> Future of the Corvair - LONG!!

[Bill Hubbell]

Since I am writing to Virtual Vairs I can assume that many of you reading
this have at least two things in common: a love of Corvairs and at least a
passing interest in computers.  I hope, therefore, that most of you will
appreciate the following.

I have owned a Corvair of one sort or another since 1970, the year I turned
16.  Back then, we who worked on our cars were considered "mechanics", and
the best of us learned how to take apart and fix almost anything
"mechanical" on our cars.

A few years later, I became interested in computers.  My first programming
experience (1976) was at the University of Michigan, using the then
state-of-the-art technology of mainframe computers, punch-cards, and an
obscure programming language based on something called FORTRAN.

About ten years later (1986) I got my first personal computer, a Leading
Edge Model D.  I splurged for the 30MB disc drive and the amber monochrome
CRT monitor.  Rather than bore you here with all the amazing details of this
(at the time) amazing hunk of technology, you can read all about it here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leading_Edge_Model_D

The computer transformed my life in the same way that the Corvair had some
16 years earlier.  Suddenly, I had the power to "word-process", make
"spreadsheets", and eventually use a very powerful program called "dBase".
After a few more years, I was using the computer to do my personal finances,
first on a program called "Peachtree" and then on a new program called
"Quicken".  All of these amazing programs had to be loaded on to the
computer using 5 1/4" "Floppy" discs, originally holding only 360kb of data.

It took only a few years before I started using the computer to communicate
with other computers, using something called a "modem".  E-mail did not
appear until a few years after that.

By 1994, my "old" Leading Edge was 'way past obsolete, so I bought a new
Gateway 486-DX33 with a way-cool CD-ROM drive and VGA color monitor.

I could go on, but I won't.  I'm sure many of you have similar experiences.

Yes.  Those were the "good-old days" of computing.  We were the mavericks of
our time - the "early adopters" of technology.  We were, indeed, on the
"leading edge" of the technological revolution; the beginning of "The
Information Revolution".

And all of it - the 5.25" floppies, the 30MB hard drive, dBase, DOS, etc. -
is now hopelessly obsolete.  Most people don't even have the capability of
reading old floppy discs anymore, even if they would want to.

Our children, born in the early 1980s, still retain some memories of those
early computers, but really, what we are all using now - smart cell phones,
IPODs, HDTV, Wireless Internet, etc. - it is all so far advanced from those
early computers that hardly anybody remembers, or cares, how it used to be.

The last Corvair was built in 1969, with technology from the mid 1960s.

Today's automobiles have more computational power than my Leading Edge Model
D had in 1986, (which in turn had more computational power that the Apollo
mission which landed on the moon in 1969).

What's my point?  It should be obvious.  The world has changed - so much and
so fast.  We who have lived through these times have grown to accept the
change as it seemed to occur gradually to us, but to our children (the
"younger" ones), the world of the 1960s - the Age of Corvair - would be
almost unrecognizable.  Indeed, the 1980s seem almost unrecognizable.

Attracting "younger" people to the Corvair hobby means attracting them to
the past - not their past, mind you, but to a past they never knew.  Sure,
it can be done - after all, there are still people re-enacting Civil War
battles, even though the last Civil War veteran died a half-century ago -
but keep in mind that our interest in the ancient past (i.e. - the past
before our lifetime) is largely based on how significant the events were
when current.  

The Corvair, while representing a significant advance in technology at the
time, was never widely embraced by the public, and nothing about its
technology was so unique that it has not been replaced by advanced
technologies.  Therefore its place in history is, at best, a footnote.

Yes, we - who grew up in that era, who fondly remember those times, who
learned how to set points, balance carburetors, change brakes, etc. - we
will always love and cherish that car.  But we cannot expect our children,
or our children's children, to have the same love or reverence for something
so obscure and alien to their world.  It is just an old, obsolete car to
them, ancient and discarded technology - just like the floppy disk.

Still, there are always a few oddballs in society who are attracted to the
ancient, obsolete, or obscure things.  Somebody has to be the
anthropologist, archeologist, paleontologist, or Corvairologist.

Hopefully there will always be somebody who appreciates the Corvair.  There
just won't be so many of them.

Let us enjoy our cars (and the youthful memories they stir) while we can.
Let us "preserve, protect, and defend" our Corvair and Corvair memories
while we can.

Perhaps someday there WILL be a Corvair Museum, full of dusty artifacts and
arcane volumes of information, maybe even a Corvair or two, where someday,
perhaps a hundred years from now, a young boy or girl will visit and fall in
love all over again with our air-cooled wonder.

Let's build that dream.

Bill Hubbell
President, Stock Corvair Group