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Posts Tagged “

Corvair

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lee johnson chevrolet show

The Vintage Chevrolet Club Of America Shows Off Rain-Soaked Detroit Iron In Seattle

When commenter of the super-stars, Startlton_Heston, offered up some photos from the Lee Johnson Chevrolet 75th Anniversary Car Show we assumed there would be a dozen or so photos to throw into a gallery. Little did we know, although we probably should have assumed, Mr. Heston was insane enough (in the best way) to send us more than one hundred lovingly taken photos detailing 69 years of Chevy metal. Being Seattle, the VCCA meet was a little rainy. A report from the Omega Man as well as some more photos below the jump.
1930 Chevrolet Coupe

1931 Chevrolet Five Passenger Sedan

1936 Chevrolet Standard Sedan

1937 Chevrolet Coupe

1940 Chevrolet Business Coupe

1941 Chevrolet Club Coupe

1941 Chevrolet Master Deluxe

1946 Chevrolet Half Ton Pickup

1952 Chevrolet Bel Air Deluxe

1952 Chevrolet Pickup

1953 Corvette

1954 Chevrolet 210 Two Door

1954 Chevrolet Bel Air

1957 Chevrolet Pickup

1960 Chevy Corvair

1960 Chevy Impala

1962 Chevy Nova II 400

1962 Corvette

1963 Chevy Corvair Monza Convertible

1964 Chevy Impala Two Door

1964 Chevy Impala Four Door

1965 Chevy Nova II Wagon

1968 Chevy Camaro SS

1973 Chevy Camaro Z28

1975 Chevy Caprice Classic Convertible

1989 Chevy Cavalier Z24 ConvertibleReport From Starlton below the jump: More »

Feature

6:33 PM on Sun May 4 2008
By Matt Hardigree
2,537 views, 72 comments

Latest by Starlton Heston, Gushing post-mother: @avusone: Thanks for the clarification! I noted it as '68 cause I hawk-eyed the seatbelt inside and it had 1968 on it and I took it for the model year...??? HRRRMMM @OldeEnglishD: Yea, the jacked up 57 was surprising to me, 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
2,110 views, 41 comments

Latest by busbodger: 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
3,092 views, 48 comments

Latest by brandegee: Corvan's awesome, but I'm not really into caricatures. Gotta go with the SP, one of the few (only?) 2-strokers to see battle at Le Mans. Audi's not-so- successful first attempt at the endurance classic:[www.formula2.net] more »

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
1,162 views, 36 comments

Latest by null: 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 »

nov

The Corphibian WIll Help You Survive In Style

This Corvair isn't Jesus, but it will walk on water. The appropriately named Corphibian isn't the genius one-off creation of some boating Corvair lover, but rather an actual prototype produced by some long forgotten boatmaker hoping the loadside amphibian would be a hit in the aftermarket. As you can imagine, this great demand for amphibious Chevrolets never materialized. Or maybe it was killed off by some unheard of consumer advocate. Unsafe at any depth? Either way, it would make quite the survival vehicle if zombies can't swim. More »

2:30 PM on Fri Feb 22 2008
By Matt Hardigree
1,041 views, 23 comments

Latest by beejay: Sorry for the double post - didn't see the first one post in anything like a timely manner... 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
1,188 views, 29 comments

Latest by Maymar: 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 »

found on ebay

Rudy Giuliani's Corvair For Sale, Squeegee Men Tremble

When we found out from Eric at CorvairProject.com that the '66 Chevrolet Corvair convertible once owned by presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani is for sale, we spent a few minutes just imagining how great a Giuliani-versus-Nader presidential race would be. The debates might start out with Rudy trying to slap his customary "Hero of 9/11" label on every statement, but they'd quickly degenerate into a snarling match over GM's omission of a rear swaybar and collapsible steering column on the early Corvairs. Giuliani last owned the car in 1996 and it's been sitting ever since, so it probably needs months of some work.[eBay Motors]

10:30 AM on Wed Jan 23 2008
By Murilee Martin
1,678 views, 32 comments

Latest by J-Roc: My '62 Corvair was scary. A few sandbags in the 'trunk' helped but I don't miss that aspect of the experience. The later models were fine; Nader's nadir was his hard-on for the Corvair. 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
4,006 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
2,895 views, 83 comments

Latest by Gram's Caddy: 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
2,759 views, 59 comments

Latest by bantamweight: For me, chevrolet performance parts are easily to find than caravelle. So, I will go for chevrolet. Thanks. more »

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
1,670 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
630 views, 12 comments

rust and roll

Rolling Time into a 50-Dollar Paint Job

Back when we used to paint houses, movie sets, and the occasional old Plymouth instead of making it big in automotive journalism, a great deal of time was spent sanding, scraping, and sanding again. Preparation is the larger part of a paint job. Armed with a a roller, a can of rustoleum, and a pile of sandpaper, the aforementioned maxim can slowly be turned into a shining white Corvair on the cheap. Mr. Rickwrench himself claims the Yenko striping is good for 5-7 wheel horsepower from established butt dyno tests. – Mike Bumbeck More »

1:00 PM on Thu Jun 7 2007
By Mike Bumbeck
6,508 views, 21 comments

Latest by rolledon: There is a dedicated website for this. [www.RolledOn.com] more »

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
2,794 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 »

ultra vans across the universe

World's Largest Corvair

The Ultra Van crowns itself as the world's largest production Corvair by way of an aluminum and fiberglass monococque shell wrapped around a Corvair transaxle. As the Ultra Van itself was conceived by aircraft designer David Peterson, the biggest Corvair is more like an aluminum airplane wing in the round than a conventional body-on-frame RV. Only about 370 Ultra Vans were ever produced. 250 of them still roam the roads. The Ultra Van is affectionately known among club members as the whale. This nickname sprang from truckers overheard on a CB radio referring to a caravan of the World's Largest Corvairs as funny little white whales on wheels. Ultra Van, ahoy! Fudgie the whale is still hanging out at your participating Carvel ice cream store. – Mike Bumbeck More »

2:00 PM on Wed May 23 2007
By Mike Bumbeck
3,288 views, 16 comments

Latest by aerokurt: Hello, @oskar: Is anybody out there? I know where one is right now,and it's the most known one - the smiley facecheers, Kurtaerokurt@hotmail.com more »

vintage jc whitney goodness

Bolt a Corvair Engine Into Your VW And Make It A Real Bomb!

Well, maybe "bolt" isn't quite the right word, since that listing (from the 1975 JC Whitney catalog) mentions that "some modification to engine compartment" is necessary to fit the GM pancake six into the People's Car. Since getting a VW Type IV into a Beetle is quite the Sawzall job, one can only imagine the rending of metal necessary to shoehorn the much larger Corvair mill in there. But still, the idea of a time when the junkyards were full of Corvair engines and air-cooled V-Dubs clattered down every road seems appealing. – Murilee Martin More »

12:00 PM on Wed May 23 2007
By Murilee Martin
1,849 views, 11 comments

Latest by MadHungarian: @stevezilla: I believe that is correct; the easiest Corvair to VW swap is a Ghia. Trouble is, Ghias rust even faster than Corvairs, so are there any decent Ghia shells left to accept a donation . . . more »

car shows

Corvairs Make the Books in Burbank


A small but dedicated group of Corvair owners met at our favorite Burbank bookstore this last Saturday morning for some rear engine togetherness. Among the examples attending were a Corvair powered by a Buick V-8, and a '69 Glass Enterprises Bounty Hunter Corvair-powered Dune Buggy. Our attention was divided between the factory stock draw-through turbo equipped '66 Corsa, the fully equipped Greenbrier van, and the die-cast Fiat 500 in the bookstore. – Mike Bumbeck More »

3:00 PM on Tue May 22 2007
By Mike Bumbeck
717 views, 13 comments

retro

Behold the Polaris, a Rear-Engined Pontiac!!

Er, we mean a re-badged Corvair. Still though, as nifty as the Corvair was, it would have worked much better as a Pontiac. After all, what builds more excitement than flipping over? Oh we know, we know. Mean old Ralph Nader said nasty things about the poor little Corvair. And he wasn't alone. Here's what a Pontiac brand manager named John Z. Delorean had to say about the Polaris,
"Frank Winchell, now VP of Engineering, but then an engineer at Chevy, flipped one of the first prototypes on the GM test track in Milford, Michigan. Others followed. The questionable safety of the car caused a massive internal fight among GM's engineers over whether the car should be built with another form of suspension."
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4:30 PM on Tue Apr 24 2007
By Jonny Lieberman
971 views, 8 comments

Latest by Dave: How's about another obscure John Z. Pontiac; the 1964 Banshee. Even rarer than the Polaris, and ten times the hotness, even with the straight six. more »