Ralph Nader

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 »

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 »

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 »

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

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
986 views, 8 comments

Latest by thunder: 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 »

news

Nader? I Don't Even Know Her!: Corvair-Loving Iowan Must Give up "F Nader"

Our tabloid-y bretheren at Sploid bring us the story of a Corvair-loving Iowan who's been muzzled by the man. It seems the "F Nader" plate on one of his beloved whippities has tapped a wellspring of righteous indignation in one of his fellow motorists, who wonders how to explain the plate to his kids (their apparently having learned the alphabet from the little-known TV spinoff "Sesa-f***-me Street"). The motorist ratted out the guy's secret f-bomb to the Iowa Department of Transportation, which is taking back the plate sporting the man's personal message to the author of "Unsafe at Any Speed." Sounds like a job for the ACLU. More »

12:00 PM on Fri Jun 2 2006
By Mike Spinelli
123 views, 4 comments

Latest by BlackIce_GTS: Will everyone please stop thinking about the children? This is just absurd. The standards a parent wants to raise a child to are their own problem, not everybody else's. more »

news

The Effects of Kapton on Fire: Mother Jones on Ford's Switch Problem

Our pal Jason Rosenberg, who played guitar in the East Bay's late, lamented The Pattern, used to work at Mother Jones. We've always liked the mag, even as we can only take so much alarmism. But now, the MoJos have busted out with some insight into Ford's flaming cruise-control switch situation. More »

5:08 PM on Mon Apr 17 2006
By Davey G. Johnson
104 views, 7 comments

Jalopnik

Production 2010 Chevy Camaro Revealed!

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