The Infamous Chevrolet Corvair
An Uphill Battle
Hailed as “car of the year” in 1960, condemned by Ralph Nader in 1965, and defunct by 1969, the Chevrolet Corvair was a popular vehicle line for several years despite some glaring engineering issues.
Nader’s barbs ultimately doomed this classic car—even if its safety was vindicated later on. Did you ever drive in a Chevy Corvair?
A Big Market For A Small Space
The Chevrolet Corvair was a compact car that rose up in a market the Big Three automakers had abandoned in the 1950s. General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler (which included Chevrolet) had taken existing designs and scaled them up, but didn’t add smaller models to fill the gap.
Soon, they were paying for it.
The European Invasion
Unsurprisingly, foreign automakers were happy to step into the breach, with Volkswagen, Renault, and Fiat among the European carmakers happy to serve the American consumer looking for an additional car for their household or just wanting to stretch their dollar a bit further.
Smaller Homegrown Players
And it wasn’t just the Europeans who saw an opening. The 1950 Nash Rambler picked up part of the compact-car market, with AMC pushing a new Rambler line after the company rose from the merger of Nash and Hudson in 1954. Studebaker’s Lark also got into the compact act.
Plenty of American automakers were making compacts—but when would the Big Three catch up?
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The Shrinking Machine
The Big Three soon wanted back into the compact market, but they took different routes to get there. Having scaled up their designs, Ford and Chrysler then scaled them back down—to about 80% of their current size.
This wasn’t about innovation, but taking a low-risk, low-cost engineering approach. But one man had other ideas...
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