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Posts Tagged “

chevrolet corvair

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down on the street bonus edition

DOTS-O-Rama Sunday: 1964 Chevrolet Corvair

We're going to stay in Orange County a while longer, heading from Costa Mesa to neighboring Huntington Beach. We'd mention that Huntington Beach is the official Surf City USA, only we'd probably get howls of outrage from Santa Cruz; in any case, HB's climate is great for preserving old cars. ß®@ƒƒ spotted this unsafe-at-any-speed '61 '64 in very nice shape- though not so sure those are the best-looking Corvair wheels we've ever seen- parked with the top down to facilitate photography. Do that jump thing to hear what ß®@ƒƒ has to say about his experience.

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12:00 PM on Sun Jun 15 2008
By Murilee Martin
705 views, 25 comments

Latest by Slantsick goes hybrid: Burns Oil and Rubber: @the artist formerly known as dolo54: Actually, my best bet has always been to have a wretched pile of shit that nobody would steal... more »

question of the day

Which Car Is The Biggest Death Trap?

Most of us feel the most alive when we're driving, which is why we occasionally pause before getting into cars that look somewhat less-than-safe. Of course, we're no strangers to waving off life-flight helicopters, so our perception of safety may be different from that of than others. Any car can be unsafe if not properly maintained or intelligently driven, but some cars just seem deadlier than others. Among cars remembered as death traps are the Ford Pinto, Chevy Corvair and the Bridgestone tire-equipped Ford Exploder. More »

11:40 AM on Thu Jun 12 2008
By Matt Hardigree
4,546 views, 134 comments

Latest by OldElvis: oh and any Lotus 7 cars. more »

choose your eternity

PCH, No Escape From Engine-Swapped Porsches Edition: VR6 914 or Corvair 912?

Perhaps you breathed a sigh of relief after Chevy-Powered Porsche Hell was over with, figuring that (with the small-block-motivated 911 winning so decisively) you would be spared the temptation of a hacked-up Porsche sporting a non-Stuttgart engine for quite a while. However Project Car Hell doesn't work that way; just because you were able to walk past the fiery gates once doesn't mean you won't be lured right back in by the same kind of bait! That's why we're returning to Porsche Engine Swap Hell today, this time going for six cylinders instead of eight.
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5:20 PM on Wed Apr 23 2008
By Murilee Martin
2,394 views, 41 comments

Latest by n/a: I'll take the 912. (I've got to go finish my Corvair implanted VW Westfalia...) more »

choose your eternity

Project Car Hell: Auto Union 1000 or Shorty Corvair Van?


In a rare upset, a French car actually lost a Choose Your Eternity challenge! Not only that, front-wheel-drive triumphed over a rear-engined machine. Yes, the Fiat 128 Rally beat the Simca 1000GL in our last Project Car Hell! Today we're going to look at a pair of vehicles that do interesting things with the concept of scale: a tiny German Thunderbird or a huge Seattle Hot Wheels car.
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5:15 PM on Fri Mar 14 2008
By Murilee Martin
3,370 views, 48 comments

down on the street bonus edition

Intact British Corvair Nothing Short Of Miraculous

You know how all the 30-year-old British Leyland vehicles in England dissolved into heaps of reddish powder long ago? That makes us wonder how in the hell it was possible for a 45-year-old Chevy Corvair- one of the all-time rustophilic cars ever built- to thumb its nose at the odds and remain all bright and shiny in Colchester, England. The aptly-named Rust-MyEnemy caught this '63 in a parking garage and had low-end phone camera at the ready; read his description after the jump.

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3:00 PM on Tue Mar 4 2008
By Murilee Martin
1,181 views, 36 comments

Latest by n/a: Comment on Intact British Corvair Nothing Short Of Miraculous Don't know if anyone is still on this post, Bill Ireland was the dealership, he sold them to the Hicks brothers and I don't think they own them anymore. He also more »

down on the street bonus edition

This Corvair Convertible Doesn't Fear Colorado Snow!

Once again, Kitt finds us another cool car parked on the streets of Denver; this time she's persuaded the owner to open the doors and engine cover, in an obvious attempt to knock the DOTS crown from Alameda's dome. This time the car is a 1960 1962 Chevy Corvair convertible, which, judging from its showroom-floor condition, doesn't live on the street all the time. Rudy Giuliani must be envious! Make the jump for many, many more photos.

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10:20 AM on Tue Feb 19 2008
By Murilee Martin
1,537 views, 29 comments

Latest by Maymar - now with 37% less anonymity: From the stories relayed to me by an aunt (my grandparents owned a used Corvair or two) although it may have been good in the snow, Tim Hortons made a better defroster than anything Chevy put on the car. I more »

choose your eternity

Project Car Hell: Turbo Corvaired Bus or Cosworth + GT Vegas?

In our last Project Car Hell, the Mazda Rotary Pickup stomped the RX-4 Wagon by a huge three-to-one margin, no doubt because we're all suckers for unfixable little trucks with a huge ROTARY POWERED sign on the tailgate. But forget all about Rotary Hell, because now we've got a couple- actually a trio- of real gems for your eternal wrenching enjoyment... More »

5:30 PM on Wed Aug 22 2007
By Murilee Martin
4,287 views, 57 comments

question of the day

Ralph Nader: Devil Or Angel?

Philosophy Week marches on... This isn't Wonkette, so we won't be discussing Florida circa 2000, OK? We will be discussing what Ralph Nader did in 1965: publish a book called Unsafe At Any Speed. Far too many people think of Nader's polemic as "the book about the Corvair." Truth is, only one of the eight chapters was about the butt-engined Chevy. The larger theme of the book was that automakers routinely chose profit over safety and constantly fought against items such as seatbelts, padded dashboards and collapsible steering columns. GM sure didn't help their case by sending private dicks and hookers after the morally upright Nader. Also remember that none other than John DeLorean in his own book On A Clear Day You Can See General Motors, wrote that everything Nader said about the Corvair was not only true, but known to GM before the car ever went on sale. More »

12:15 PM on Wed Aug 8 2007
By Jonny Lieberman
2,945 views, 83 comments

Latest by Naturally Exasperated?: Nader is at least ten thousand times more informed and intelligent than Al Gore. Therefore, i respect him. However, the children of his campaigns also turned out to be 5mph impact bumpers, sealed-beam headlamps to uglify european cars and i am more »

choose your eternity

Project Car Hell, Ass-Engined Edition: Caravelle or Corvair?

Yesterday's Choose Your Eternity matchup was just about as close a race as the Zagato versus Javelin choice, with the Rolls edging out the Bagheera by a slim margin. We're going to ease back down into low-buck territory with today's choices, going with a couple of budget heroes for your eternal wrenching enjoyment...
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5:30 PM on Tue Aug 7 2007
By Murilee Martin
2,924 views, 59 comments

down on the junkyard

To Dust We Return: 1960 Chevrolet Corvair

Seeing all those surviving old cars in the DOTS series, we sometimes need to remember that some survivors end up getting junked even after nearly 50 years of service. Take, for example, this '60 Corvair I spotted in an East Bay self-service wrecking yard. More »

10:30 AM on Thu Jul 19 2007
By Murilee Martin
1,835 views, 19 comments

allegorical shorthand

Vehicles as Metaphor

Mental_floss explores the automobile as metaphor, aligning the Edsel with failure, the Pinto with volatility, the DeLorean with spastic hype, the Yugo with shoddiness and the Corvair with a lack of safety. Which is all well, good, fine and dandy. But there are other, more obscure vehicular metaphors out there. And it is your mission, dear readers of tha Jalop, to find and explain them. So get to 'splainin'. [mental_floss]

8:00 PM on Fri Jul 13 2007
By Davey G. Johnson
648 views, 12 comments

down on the street

Corvair 95!

It's a good thing I use a pseudonym, because it's always dangerous drawing the attention of Corvair lovers, even if it's just to share photographs of a surviving street-driven Corvair. Corvairistas possess not only the usual single-minded obsession with their (incredibly superior and innovative! I swear!) rear-engine GM vehicles but a sense of having been wronged by an evil, corrupt cartel. Kept down! Why, if it hadn't been for that commie rat bastid Nader, we'd all be driving brand-new Corvairs right now! In fact, they'd be required by law! Right. Now that we've got my... uh... disclaimer out of the way, let's get right to Down On The Street business: this here is a Corvair 95 van from the 1961-63 era... More »

9:15 AM on Fri Jun 1 2007
By Murilee Martin
3,072 views, 14 comments

Latest by n/a: The "95" refers to the wheelbase, it's 95 inches from the center of the front axle to the center of thre rear axle. Why that'd be important enough to name your vehicle after I don't know. We more »

retro

Corvairamino Bonanza!

We were once talking to a stripper named "Holden," and seeing as we'd been freezing our tootsies off waiting to see a couple of Evos run down the Strip in Vegas, we had cars on the brain. So we were like, "Holden. That's an Australian car." Then she tells us that she really likes old cars and used to own a Corvair. Now what's better than a stripper with an automotive name that isn't "Lexus" in a Corvair, you might ask? How about a Corvairamino with a bed full of strippers? That totally beats a Milan with a trunk full of dead hookers, Austin. [Thanks to Eric for the tip.] More »

6:00 PM on Tue Jun 6 2006
By Davey G. Johnson
155 views, 4 comments

Latest by nicjasno: That's a photoshop. This is the original pic: [url=http://starodobnik.net/sloforum/slike/velika_168000264.jpg]original[/url] more »