Clearly, one of the most distinctive automobiles of the 1960s is Chevrolet’s Corvair, a compact model with four-wheel independent suspension and a rear-mounted, horizontally opposed, air-cooled six-cylinder engine for power. The name Corvair was a contraction of Bel Air and Corvette. It was first applied to a Corvette-based fastback show car for the 1954 GM Motorama. That Corvette-based Corvair never went into production, but the name returned a little more than a half-decade later on the car that Chevrolet simply advertised as “for economical transportation” and “a most unusual car for people who enjoy the unusual.”
The name was selected by Ed Cole, who guided the early development of the car. It was appropriate because the Corvair in some forms could be a competent performer; it even appeared in some print advertising with a Corvette. It could be sporty and comfortable and offered seating for five or six, depending on whether you had bucket seats or a bench seat. Furthermore, Chevy’s Corvair had excellent weight distribution, independent suspension, good traction in almost any situation and a relatively quiet ride. The Corvair did tend to behave like any other rear-engine car with swing-axles and would over-steer when pushed too hard in a corner. For the 1964 model year, transverse springs (called camber compensators) were introduced on the Corvair to lessen this problem until a new suspension system replaced it the following model year.
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