<VV> '70 Corvair

James P. Rice ricebugg at mtco.com
Fri Aug 20 14:04:24 EDT 2010


All:  There were styling proposals for various front & rear engine cars,
mostly water pumpers, many with "Corvair" on the side scripts.  When the LM
design team finished the LM, they went on to the Camaro, while sometimes
working on other stuff under the general heading of "Corvair".  All the
styling drawings out in the public domain which are clearly "Corvair" seen
to be dated before '67.   In some of these "Corvair" drawings you can see
the Camaro, the Vega and the later Monza.  Go find and read Chuck Jordan's
speech in the Communique from many years ago, given at a left coast
convention, in which he mentions ongoing Corvair projects or the piece from
many years ago in Spl Interest Autos on Corvair styling.

I know Ken worked of a project labeled "70 Corvair".  I do not doubt his
memory, or that F.Body was working ahead of known facts.  But likewise, I
cannot tell you, if I tried to remember them, how many projects I worked on
within Caterpillar Product Support engineering which were labeled one thing
but were something else, or just some wild hare experiment.  On one project,
when I asked, I was told "I can tell you, but I'd have to kill you, because
they would come and kill both of us if I didn't do you in first."  He was
serious.  Years later, it became public knowledge when it was cancelled, I
learned the project was for a mobile ICBM launcher.

Ken and I had a somewhat heated exchange a couple years ago about this,  So
I went digging, and I have a 12 page article on the subject giving evidence
about why and when the Corvair died.  Most of the evidence has been
published in the Communique, but you have to retain the information and
connect the dots.  In a criminal court, what I found would be mostly
circumstantial evidence, but in a civil court, the "preponderance of
evidence" is conclusive: there wasn't going to be any chassis labeled "1970
Corvair", in spit of the work some of the various areas of GM did toward
one.

GM never said "Why" so far as I can remmember, just that the Corvair was
dead.

Thank Ralph for the '67-69 Corvairs.

Historically Yours,
			James

*********************************************

Message: 4
Date: Thu, 19 Aug 2010 07:36:38 -0700 (PDT)
From: Frank Ness <aircoolvair at yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: <VV> Corvair and OBD, EFI, etc
To: virtualvairs at corvair.org

Question that begs to be asked.... were there any body, style changes for
1970? If so what were they?

Regards,
Frank

--- On Thu, 8/19/10, kenpepke at juno.com <kenpepke at juno.com> wrote:

> From: kenpepke at juno.com <kenpepke at juno.com>
> Subject: Re: <VV> Corvair and OBD, EFI, etc
> To: virtualvairs at corvair.org
> Date: Thursday, August 19, 2010, 11:52 AM
>
> What was the 'official' GM / Chevrolet reason for the demise of the
Corvair?? Fisher Body Division was well on the way for tooling a 1970
model.? I worked on that project.? GM has a policy of business as usual
until the official change takes place so even though engineering  knew the
end was coming it was not well known exactly when.? A great deal of start up
problems at the new Lordstown plant was at least partially responsible for
the last of Corvair production to be done off line and that may have been an
unadvertised major factor.?
>
> Chevrolet Engineering was well aware that the government had full intent
to exercise more and more control of their product and emissions was the
talked about 'item of the day' in house.? It was well known an air cooled
engine would not meet the expected upcoming US standards.? That
> would not be something GM would have wanted to advertise either.? Seems to
me the official reason was lack of market response and that was back in
November of 65.?  We know they carried the car through the 69 model year
because of Mr. Nader.? To the outside world it died a quiet death.
> Ken P
>







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