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...
In any case, this Corvair 95 has been a fixture in Alameda for decades now, parked on a busy street when it's not at work.
And work it does, because this isn't some coddled vintage vehicle that's just for show- this Corvair is a painter's truck! Not sure how much I like the three-tone paint job and air intake scoops, but the fact that this van's a driver makes that stuff acceptable.
The Corvair 95 van had a grille/headlight treatment similar to its car sibling, though of course it's quite a bit taller. We hope it didn't share the Corvair car's unfortunate spear-the-driver-in-minor-wreck steering column design. Just kidding, Corvair lovers- you can put the pitchforks and torches down!
These are some of the nicest-looking taillights you'll see on a van. In fact, it's a damn shame GM didn't keep this look when they went to the front-engine small van design in '64, opting instead for dreary industro-taillights.
This ain't no poser rack- this van hauls ladders and paint buckets to job sites, by God! In fact, call me crazy, but I'd take the Detroit air-cooled van over the '57 VW Type II that parks a couple blocks away, were I forced to make a choice.
Related:
World's Largest Corvair [internal]