It's the Chevrolet Corvair of the early 1960s, and now with decades having passed and many chances for reassessment, the car has a slew of defenders who think that it got a bad rap. One is Patrick Croan of Temecula, Calif., who we came across last month at the Desert Classic Concours d'Elegance.
at a golf course here.
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The Corvair was the compact that propelled Ralph Nader to fame. The attorney wrote a scathing book, Unsafe At Any Speed, in 1965 in which he went through a litany of ways that cars are unsafe -- from lack of restraint systems to unpadded dashboards. A starring example was the hapless Corvair, a car with a rear-engine design and swing-arm suspension that he alleged was prone to spinning out of control. The Corvair had been around for about five or six years when the book came out, and although it would stay in production for another four, the sullied image of the formerly carefree car never recovered.
None of that bothers Croan. His family owned a Corvair, and he says he made a coast-to-coast trip in the car as a boy . Five people crammed in the small car made the trip, including spending nights sleeping in it along the way. For Croan, it was bliss. "It was really a great experience," he says.
About 11 years ago, Croan yearned for a Corvair. So he bought the 1962 model from an owner that never quite got around to restoring it. It came in boxes. About five years later, Croan had put the car back into basic shape. But he didn't stop there. Almost as if to underscore his confidence in its safety, he souped it up.
"I have a need for speed," he explains.
Today, it's a dream car. And despite all of GM's! sea of troubles, Corvair nostalgia lives on.
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