On 03/21/2010 12:00 PM, Ross Sauer -> Ed Hulett wrote:
 RS> "Ed Hulett -> Ross Sauer"  wrote in
 RS> news:20592$MATZDOBRE{at}JamNNTPd:

 RS>>>>>>> Did some research last night, found it again. It was
 RS>>>>>>> mentioned in Ralph Nader's book,
"Unsafe At Any Speed."

 BA>>>>>> That book was fiction back when Nader wrote it
back in the
 BA>>>>>> early 1960s - IIRC I was in HS at the time. 'course,
 BA>>>>>> Nader was able to build a very nice career from it.

 RS>>>>> The problem is Nader's book wasn't entirely fiction.
 RS>>>>> Cars in the late 50's and early 60's could be really junk.

 BA>>>> Nader's book was specifically about the rear engined Chevrolet
 EH>> Corvair. BA>> The early Corvair models *did* have a
tendency to spin
 EH>> on slick BA>> pavements, but that problem was fixed by the time
 EH>> Nader published BA>> his book.

 RS>>> Also the Corvair had different handling, the engine being in the
 EH>> rear. RS> But GM didn't market the car as having any different
 EH>> handling, so it was RS> sold to people who drove it like they would
 EH>> the family car. RS> That was a disaster in the making.

 EH>> You don't know what you are talking about. The Corvair was not a
 EH>> disaster. It handled quite well. My dad had two Corvairs, a 1962
 EH>> Spyder and a 1965 Corsa. The Spyder was turbocharged and would go
 EH>> 120mph and handled the windy 410 highway on the way to camping. We
 EH>> kept up with my uncles 1959 Impala with a 409 4bbl.

 RS> I didn't say the car itself was a disaster.
 RS> How people drive it could be a disaster in the making, since some of
 RS> them didn't know how to handle a rear-engine car.

The VW bug had been sold for several years before the Corvair came out. The
placement of the engine wasn't that big of a problem. The first year of the
Corvair there were some handling problems, but they took care of those
problem that same year. The Corvair had a wider track than any other rear
engine vehicle which helped handling from the beginning. In 1965 Chevrolet
replaced drive axles with axles that had a universal joint on both ends
instead of just the inner end. This made the handling even better. As I
pointed out, Nader used Ford propaganda in his efforts against the Corvair.
GM's actions after that doomed the car and by 1969 it was dropped from the
Chevrolet line.

During the same time that Chevy made the Corvair, Pontiac made the Tempest
which used the same transaxle as the Corvair but had a front mounted 4cyl
engine based on their 389 v8 (it was basically one half of the v8 which
made it a slant 4). The Tempest had terrible handling.

 EH>> The '65 Corsa was even better in the handling department.

 EH>> Nader used images from a 1960 Ford propaganda film they made trying to
 EH>> show how much better their Falcon handled than the Corvair. In that
 EH>> film, if you look at it frame by frame, the driver in the Corvair had
 EH>> to whip the steering wheel back and forth to get it to spin out. The
 EH>> Falcon driver had to do the course at a lower speed to safely complete
 EH>> it.

 EH>> Ironically, the Falcon was highly unstable and was prone to flip on
 EH>> its top when cornering aggressively. I was witness to one such crash
 EH>> several years ago where the driver did not survive. The crash took
 EH>> place just outside a Denny's where I was having coffee at the time.
 EH>> The geometry of the front suspension on the Falcon was such that it
 EH>> would fold under the car with alarming ease.

 RS> Wasn't the original Mustang almost as bad?

Yes, it was because it used the very same chassis. The only saving grace
for the Mustang is that it had a lower center of gravity.

 RS>>>>> And GM could have just ignored Nader, thus ending the
 RS>>>>> problem. Instead they put a private investigator onto Nader
 RS>>>>> to dig up dirt. Very dumb mistake.

 BA>>>> GM had already addressed and fixed the problem with Corvairs by
 EH>> the BA>> time Nader's book came out. IIRC it was a weight
 EH>> distribution problem - BA>> too much weight behind the rear wheels.

 RS>>> It was the publicity of GM hiring the private investigator on
 EH>> Nader, that RS> really was GM's big mistake.

 EH>> Yes, they should have ignored the idiot. Instead, they helped the
 EH>> moron gain notoriety.

 RS> Dumb mistake on GM's part.

Agreed.

 RS>>> The book also took other cars to task as well, and some of those
 EH>> reports RS> were true.

 EH>> Really? Which ones were that?

 RS>>> Cars from the late 50's and early 60's were sheet-metal
 EH>> montrosities with RS> overpowered engines.

 EH>> You are an idiot.

 RS>>> They were junk.

 EH>> Hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!

 EH>> You haven't a clue about which you speak.

 RS> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joMK1WZjP7g

Safety has taken a leap in the positive, but that does not mean that the
cars in the 50s and 60s were junk.

They might have been less safe in an off center frontal crash, but they are
far from junk.

Ed

-- 
"Truth does not become more true by virtue of the fact that the
entire world agrees with it, nor less so even if the whole world
disagrees with it." --Jewish philosopher Maimonides (1135-1204)

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