Scandal! The Chevrolet Corvair

The fact the Corvair was powered by an air-cooled flat-six motor was also highly unusual. Although found in aircraft and tanks, at the time of its design the layout was unknown in mass-produced cars: the closest came in 1948 when Preston Tucker had produced 50 water-cooled flat-six Tucker 48 cars (usually but erroneously known as Tucker Torpedos) before another scandal I’ll detail another time unfairly or otherwise doomed his company. Air-cooled twins and fours were common in motorcycles and cars, and pioneering Czech maker Tatra had an air-cooled V8. But Cole’s proposal was new – and would subsequently be made famous by Porsche.

The body was of unitary construction, another first for GM in America, at a time when US cars were overwhelmingly body-on-frame, a technology that dated (literally) back to the horse and cart. It was also made almost exclusively from aluminium, to save weight. Suspension was fully independent, also a first for GM in America.

The rear suspension used swing axles, as did the Beetle, a controversial piece of technology, as we shall see. The tyres were of unusually low profile, the wheels wide and the styling elegant – without tail-fins or a big chrome grille to feed air to a radiator that wasn’t there.

The tag ‘all-new’ is now a motor industry cliché. Few cars are. The Corvair was.

When announced in 1959, it was widely lauded as a big step forward for Detroit. Ed Cole and his Corvair made the cover of Time. Motor Trend made it their Car of the Year.

Soon after sales began, rival compacts from Ford (the Falcon) and Chrysler (the Valiant) hit the showrooms. Sadly for Chevrolet and Cole, most compact buyers were happier with the more conventional (and crucially, cheaper) Falcon. For a Chevrolet to be outsold by a Ford was a disaster for the normally dominant GM so a conventionally engineered car to fight the Falcon – the Chevy II – was quickly developed and launched in 1962.

But GM would not give up on the Corvair. A new direction was sought. The result was a sportier two-door coupé called the Monza, launched in 1960. It had new trim, more power and would get a four rather than three-speed manual gearbox. It quickly became the most popular Corvair, outselling the sedan by almost two-to-one. A sportier Monza four-door followed, then a wagon and a convertible.

It became one of America’s most influential cars. It proved there was a market for relatively inexpensive two-door sporty cars. The Ford Mustang and other ‘Pony Cars’ would follow.

In 1962, the Corvair Monza would prove pioneering in yet another direction. A hotter version used a turbocharger, boosting power to an alleged 150bhp from the normal Monza’s 95bhp. Apparently the lag was terrible. It would be the world’s joint-first turbocharged production road car, launched at the same time as sister GM brand Oldsmobile’s new Jetfire. (It was sold from 1962-66 and was launched 11 years before Europe’s first turbo road car, the BMW 2002 Turbo).

Corvair sales grew strongly in the early ’60s. But not all drivers got on with its unusual tail-heavy layout. There were some serious accidents reported as unskilled drivers experienced sudden oversteer, exacerbated by the swing axle design.

It was a commonly used layout, and not just in rear-engine vehicles like the Beetle and the Porsche 356. (It was also used in the celebrated Mercedes 300 SL Gullwing and Auto Union’s mighty V16 C-type Grand Prix car of the 1930s.) Yet America’s generally uneducated drivers had little clue how to deal with oversteer, exacerbated by the Corvair’s 64 per cent rear weight distribution, and the big camber changes caused by the swing axle design.

The inherent problem with all swing axle designs is that while they provide excellent traction and stability with power on, if the power is suddenly cut and/or the brakes applied, as might someone in an emergency situation, the massive forward transference of weight unloads the rear axle, causing the back of the car to lift, causing the rear tyres to ‘tuck under’ dramatically changing their camber while simultaneously reducing the car’s rear track. If this is done while trying to corner, dramatic oversteer can result. The remedy is of course to get back on the gas and sit the back of the car back down again, but even understanding let alone executing such a counterintuitive move could hardly be expected of typical customers.

In short Corvair owners were crashing and civil lawsuits were being filed.

Another problem were the unusual tyre pressures: 16psi front, 26 rear. In those days gas stations were staffed by pump jockeys who’d also do your tyres and blithely inflate the Corvair’s to the typical tyre pressures for conventional cars; which didn’t help the handling either.

GM was aware of the issue, revamping the suspension in 1964 to include a front anti-roll bar (to induce some understeer), softer rear springs and a transverse rear leaf spring to reduce swing axle movement.

Then, in 1965, a Mk2 Corvair was unveiled featuring a more curvaceous design and, most significantly, a new multilink rear suspension. But that same year, a new blow would hammer the Corvair. And this one would prove fatal. It was Nader’s book.

The first sentence of Unsafe At Any Speed did not mince its words: ‘For over half a century the automobile has brought death, injury and the most inestimable sorrow and deprivation to millions of people.’

The first chapter took aim at the Corvair, and the dangerous and defective suspension (or so Nader argued) of the 1960-63 version. He claimed Chevrolet engineers knew it was flawed and had consciously cost-cut features that would have improved it and made it safer – including the front anti-roll bar that was subsequently fitted. In other words, it was knowingly badly designed.

The book was an indictment of Detroit’s attitude to road safety and didn’t stop with the Corvair or with US domestic makers: the VW Beetle was also excoriated.

Further chapters criticised Detroit for dangerous cabin design, with dashboards sprinkled with sharp knobs and levers. It was the same with exterior design, prioritising cost and style over pedestrian safety. Nader championed seat belts. He railed against the smog that was choking Los Angeles. The book concluded with a cry for government regulation to make cars safer and cleaner.

It quickly became an unexpected best seller, topping the US non-fiction charts from April through to July in 1966. Its effect was also immediate.

In February Nader was asked to testify before a senate sub-committee on automotive safety. In September, President Johnson signed the National Traffic and Motor Safety Vehicle Act, requiring new or upgraded vehicle safety standards. This led to the founding of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) that still regulates vehicle safety in America.

Seat belts would be a requirement in new cars from 1968 – although it took almost 20 years before wearing them became mandatory in some states (in New Hampshire it still isn’t compulsory). Airbags, ABS and many other regulated safety features would follow. So did compulsory crash test standards. Nader can be seen as the progenitor of them all.

After the book’s publication, GM predictably complained, blaming the accidents on driver error. Ed Cole was dismayed, pointing out that his son David drove a 1960 Corvair. The car’s inventor was unlikely to encourage his family to drive a knowingly unsafe car.

GM didn’t do itself any favours by hiring a private detective to follow Nader, hoping to unearth compromising information. On a nationally televised senate committee hearing, GM president James Roche admitted under oath it was true, further boosting Nader’s halo as a brave David fighting Detroit’s callous corporate Goliaths. Nader successfully sued for invasion of privacy.

Unsafe At Any Speed also had an immediate effect on Corvair sales. They plummeted from 237,000 in 1965 to fewer than 104,000 in 1966. In 1967, they dropped below 30,000. In its final year, 1969, sales were a mere 6000. GM kept the Corvair in production longer than made sense, given those dwindling sales. Many say GM didn’t want to give Nader the credit for killing it.

Nader’s book certainly hurt sales. But so did the huge popularity of the rival new Ford Mustang, launched in 1964: one million were sold within the first two years.

Nader would go on to be the world’s most famous crusader for consumer rights. His campaigning changed car design. He saved lives even if he killed some interesting cars – a trade-off Nader would happily accept. In 1965, before Nader’s influence, there were five deaths for every 100 million miles travelled in America. Now, in our heavily regulated world, it’s about 1.3.

Of course, state interference doesn’t always go down well, especially in America. His fiercest critic was probably legendary US car journalist Brock Yates, who called him a ‘Safety Nazi’. Nader’s regulations hurt performance and neutered styling freedom. Engineering and design creativity was smothered by regulation and red tape. The muscle cars of the glorious ’60s gave way to the strangled straitened dullards of the ’70s. The Mustang went from rampant pony to hobbled nag. In protest, Yates started the Cannonball Run.

Another critic was the great UK motoring writer LJK Setright. In his masterpiece, Drive On! A Social History of the Motor Car, he wrote that Nader, ’wildly overstated his case, whereupon the motor industry and the legislature reacted with equal violence. Although supposed to be the agents of society, the legislators completely failed to appreciate the proper function and place of the car in society: instead of prompting the manufacturers to ensure that their products were roadworthy, they forced them to make their cars crashworthy.’

The result, said Setright, was heavier, bigger and less agile cars, more likely to be involved in a crash. Although safer for occupants, they were more dangerous to other road users – especially drivers of smaller cars, pedestrians, motorcyclists and cyclists.

This elephantiasis – and danger to other road users – sadly continues to this day, mostly in the form of needlessly big SUVs.

Yet most critics – and there were plenty in the car industry – argue that Nader did some good. ‘I don’t like Ralph Nader and I didn’t like his book,’ Bob Lutz, ex-GM vice-chairman, told the New York Times. ‘But there was definitely a role for government in car safety.’

Nader’s book didn’t just turbocharge consumer rights. It also sowed the seeds for Corporate and Social Responsibility (CSR). Companies would be expected to behave ethically as well as profitably – although sadly nowadays much corporate preening is mere humbug.

Nader would go on to target food safety, nuclear power, pesticides, clean water, US military adventurism and in the 1990s took on Microsoft, arguing it was a monopoly. He also criticised McDonald’s for its scalding coffee cups. He started the American Museum of Tort Law, dedicated to civil justice and ‘the law of wrongful injury’ in 2015.

He once spoke at the Corvair Society of America. The members were cordial but received the Corvair’s great nemesis in stony silence. His opening remarks were masterful. ‘Look, there’s one thing we agree on. In this room are some of the best drivers in America. Because you have to be.’

Now aged 90, Nader never married and lives in a modest apartment in Washington, DC. He still oversees the non-profit Center for Auto Safety, which he founded. He does not own a car. His last was a 1949 Studebaker. He uses public transport or walks.

And – perhaps the $64,000 question – was the Corvair as dangerous as Nader claimed? GM engineers who worked on it insisted it wasn’t. It was just different from the average American car of the period.

I rang my chum, Ti contributor and ’65 Corvair owner Richard Bremner. He says: ‘That the 1965 Corvair featured an entirely new multilink rear suspension must at least be a partial admission of guilt. Either way, the result was a car that handled surprisingly well given its unhelpful weight distribution.’

In 1971, after pressure from Nader, the newly incorporated NHTSA ran extensive tests on a 1963 Corvair, as well as the contemporary Ford Falcon and Plymouth Valiant, and rear-engined Volkswagen Beetle and Renault Dauphine. Published in July 1972, the report concluded that the handling and stability were at least as good as its rivals.

Nader called it a ‘whitewash’. GM said it was vindicated.