To “exit stage left” is an expression adapted from theater that colloquially means to leave in an uneventful and inconspicuous manner. That’s exactly what the Chevrolet Corvair did after a decade of production and only 6,000 examples produced for final-year ’69. Over its two generations, split evenly between the 1960 – ’64 models and the redesigned 1965 – ’69s, around 1.8 million were sold. My earliest memories of the Corvair, sight unseen, were of hearing my grandmother recalling to other adults in her expressive voice about what a “dangerous” car it was. I was a young kid at the time and the only other car I had heard referred to as a deathtrap was the Ford Pinto. I had no idea what a Corvair looked like, but I imagined that any Chevrolet that shared the first four letters of its name with the Corvette probably looked really cool.
I don’t remember how old I was when I had finally seen a Corvair, either in pictures or at one of Flint’s many car shows. I’m also drawing a blank when it comes to which generation I had seen first. It might have been both at the same time. A few things were clear, though, right off the bat. Neither Corvair looked like a “deadly” machine. How could something with the eternally cool four round tail-lamp setup possibly be potentially hazardous to its occupants? (Was my grandma just being dramatic?, I asked myself.) My second observation was that while the ’65 models were heavily redesigned, there was absolutely no question in my mind that one could be anything but a Corvair.
That last thing is still mind-boggling to me. Nowadays, many products from various makes and countries-of-origin share common design elements, almost as if some parent companies subcontract the styling out to the same design firm, which ends up ladling some of the same cutlines, light shapes, and other cues onto all sorts of vehicles, regardless of where they come from or who manufactures them. Looking at both generations of Corvair, it seems to me that all it really took for me to draw a solid line between both generations are the grill-less face, quad headlamps set into chrome bezels, and twin round lights out back flanking the rear license plate. That’s literally it. There’s no commonality in the surface execution on the bodysides, and only the second generation was a pillarless hardtop. Yet, both Corvairs have a strong, shared brand identity.
It’s not my intent to restate all that has been said about the handling of the first cars, about which much has been written. I’ll link some CC content on the subject at the end. With the arrival of the ’65s came a new double-jointed rear independent suspension and none of the tricky handling issues thought of as associated with the earliest examples. For me, the tragedy of the ’65 was that seemingly right after its introduction, it had about five minutes to shine in its gorgeous, new body before the plug was pulled on its development. Parent General Motors had basically foreclosed on the Corvair during only the first year of its redesign, with an edict going out in April of ’65 that from there on out, only minor changes were to be made to the model in the name of keeping up with safety regulations.
This would explain why the ’65 is easier to distinguish than the years that followed, with its single-year taillamp lens design, the year-specific trim piece on the front panel (which had a red center with a more elongated “v” shape), and placement of the “Corvair” script badge on the front. I’m sure some of the identifiers for the other model years are learnable, like side marker lights for ’68 and the color of turn signal lenses (amber vs. clear), but the changes for the second generation don’t seem as pronounced and easily recognizable from year to year as those of the first generation cars.
To read about the excitement the new ’65 model had generated at the very beginning gives me a sense of how much hope and promise this new Corvair seemed to hold at the time of its introduction. Its styling is still a knockout, especially in convertible form. The ’65 Corvair might have been the first car for whose shape I fell hard that didn’t subscribe to the long-hood / short-deck formula that has been the norm for sporty cars for as long as I have been alive. Granted, the sporty, two-door-only Mustang had been introduced to the market just months before the new Corvair arrived, but there was absolutely no sales contest between the two cars. It wasn’t even close, though the new ’65 Corvair’s numbers had inched up about 9% or about 20,000 units from the prior year, to 235,500 built.
Unless its fender badges have been removed, this example is a Corvair 500 base model. Otherwise, “Monza” badges would be on the lower front fenders, or the “Corsa” badge would appear on the lower rear quarter panels aft of the door. That would make this angelic, white example one of about 36,700 coupes originally produced in what was the third most popular Corvair configuration that year, behind the Monza coupe (89,000) and Monza hardtop sedan (37,200). The rarest ’65 was the high-zoot Corsa convertible, with just 8,400 units made. The 164 cubic inch flat six engine in the rear came in various output levels, with the standard mill providing 95 horsepower, and the optional versions yielding 110, 140, or 180 horses, the latter being the optional turbocharged unit available only in the Corsa.
Between Ralph Nader, the runaway success of the Ford Mustang, the subsequent arrival of Chevrolet’s own Chevy II and Camaro (the Corvair got tag-teamed, internally), parent General Motors’s almost immediate neglect, and a buying public that apparently didn’t do any extra research, it seems the beautiful, well-engineered second-generation Corvair quickly became an automotive scapegoat of sorts. The relative affordability of the Corvair on the classics market continues to speak to this, with nice ’65 examples available in today’s market for around just $14,000 on average. Closing the loop on my metaphor and subtitle, I’ve learned to reframe the Corvair’s exit from the new-car marketplace from one of disgrace and the public’s waning interest to one of a misunderstood individualist who had to be its full, authentic self or simply, quietly leave the table and an intriguing legacy behind it.
Rogers Park, Chicago, Illinois.
Sunday, April 28, 2024.
Click on the following links for additional Curbside reading on the Corvair from Paul Niedermeyer and from myself.
Brochure pages were sourced from www.oldcarbrochures.org.
What a great summary about Chevrolets exceptional Corvair. We own a right hand drive 1965 Chevrolet Corvair Monza convertible. It has a black exterior and a red interior. It’s has almost every factory and dealer option. This includes factor air con., power top etc.
It’s a rare car in Australia where we live, but being right hand drive makes it rare in any country.
Carl, I used to see a RHD second gen Corvair around Brisbane’s northside.
It had a RHD rack & pinion conversion. I wonder if it was yours.
No. We used a “Toyota Corolla steering box” when converting our ‘65 Monza convertible to right hand drive. So the car you refer to could not have been our Corvair.
In doing the right hand drive conversion, I did consider using a rack & pinion, but was concerned about possible ‘bump steer’. In the end Corvairs were never designed around rack & pinion, but I guess it could work.
Thank you, Carl. Yours sounds like a beautiful specimen, especially in that color combo. I’m now curious to look up online what a RHD Corvair interior looks like.
G’day Joseph,
If you google images of ‘right hand drive 1965 Corvair’, you will before much searching see photos of our black / red interior RHD Corvair.
We have only, in the past week or two completed its ground up 20 year restoration, so in the coming weeks photos of it will appear in various classic car publications and these will move around the web.
Carl, how exciting… and timely. I will absolutely keep my eyes peeled for online features of your car in the coming weeks!
I don’t know about the 1st generation Corvairs, as I never drove one, but the 2nd generation cars did not handle badly at all. My 65 was even better with a 327 V-8 in the back seat. At one time my grandson had (what I thought was) a rare Corvair. It was in rough shape, and I don’t know what happened to it after he was killed (not in the car). It was a 2nd generation convertible I don’t remember if it was a stick or auto, but the only Corvair I ever saw with Factory air conditioning.
Charlie, from what I’ve read, the handling issues were properly sorted out by the time v2.0 arrived for ’65. Did it get hot inside your car with the V8, or was your a summer-only, windows-down car? I’ll bet it could scoot.
Charlie,
What colour was your late grandsons second generation Corvair Convertible? Less than 2% of Corvair production had factory air conditioning a few of this 2% were convertibles. So was it our car???
Our ‘65 Monza convertible has factory fitted air conditioning. We purchased it in 2005, in Wheeling West Virginia. It originally had a white exterior and white interior.
During the extensive ‘ground nut and bolt’ restoration we changed the exterior colour to black and the interior to red. Everything was done exactly in factory style except of course the mirror image right hand drive conversion.
I have to confess that the styling on the 2 door hardtop version of this car has always looked off to me. The deck is longer than we’re used to (a problem shared with the 67-69 Barracuda hardtop). But also there is rhe rear wheel that is too far back and the c pillar too far forward for my eyes. The convertible comes off a little better because it sort of solves at least the roofline problem. Actually, the only body that ever looked right was the fairly unusual 4 door hardtop.
These were still on the ground (and even in showrooms) when I was a kid, and I always loved the unusual growl coming from the exhaust of the boxer six.
I felt this when looking at the straight-on profile shot in this post, and I have generally always regarded this as a beautiful design. It occurs to me that I’ve only very rarely seen one in the flesh, and that in many photos (like the brochure shots included here) it’s shown in more of a 3/4 view. Now it’ll bother me any time I see one. Of course other than here those events are few and far between.
I’ve always liked the profile proportions ever since they were new. Where the long-hood short-deck cars like the Mustang look like they’re holding back, maybe hesitant to pounce, the Corvair looks like it’s leaping forward, on the attack. Of course that metaphor didn’t translate to market success.
You’ve precisely described why the Mustang vastly outsold the Corvair. The Corvair’s rear engine proportions are the equivalent of quiche compared to the Mustang’s all-American hamburger. An acquired taste for many Americans.
The Corvair’s proportions are defined by the necessities of its rear engine and the fact that coupes in the ’60s inherently lived up to the definition of that name: a cut down and shortened roof. Many/most European coupes had long rear decks in relation to their roof even if they were front engine/RWD.
John Fitch had the solution for you, with his flowing buttress roof extensions. But they don’t really work fully for me because the tail towards the rear has a downward slope, which is an essential ingredient in the Corvair’s overall lines, but doesn’t work properly with the extensions. It’s almost impossible to mess with a professional design and fully improve it; there’s bound to be a trade-off.
Wow. That Fitch reminds me of a first-generarion AMC Javelin in profile, which I also like.
I’ll agree that the four-door hardtop does look the most conventionally attractive. I like that the coupe looks *unconventionally* attractive.
I’ll never understand why people diss the Corvair two-door’s long-ish trunk, but will also give a hugely popular car like the Plymouth Duster (and related Dodge Demon / Dart Sport) a free pass in the looks department with basically similar (if not as exaggerated) proportions. That Mopar was about as long-hood and long-trumk as they came, and it was in the *’70s*. It was a full nine inches longer than the two-door Maverick.
To be clear, I like the Duster. A lot. I also like the gen-two Barracuda hardtop. It’s just that to say a long rear makes the Corvair have wonky proportions doesn’t convince me. We all like what we like, though, and that’s ultimately the decider for each of us.
I did find this shot of me from the summer of ’89 in Flint with what may be my first time seeing any Corvair in the metal!
Great catch, Joe! The Corvair was always an aberration when I was growing up in the ’60s and ’70s; pretty rare to see (especially Gen 2), especially in tinworm New England. I have developed a great appreciation for them through CC….
Thanks, Dave! Over the years, CC has brought me to appreciate a whole bunch of cars. I don’t remember reading anything about whether the Corvair was any more rust-prone than any other cars of the era. I’m curious now.
There’s a white ’65 Corsa hibernating in my garage right now, to me it feels safer than most other cars from this era. It stops pretty well and goes where it’s pointed better than any of the other period vehicles I’ve owned or driven, Corvette excepted.
When you get to know the car you can see Chevy really tried with the ’65s, and while they did enjoy a taste of success it was the wrong car for the times. Nice find!
Awesome. I hope you were able to enjoy your Corsa this summer. I think what you describe is part of the fun of owning and driving one’s classic – getting to “know” one another and how you best work together. Very cool.
The original Corvair styling was iconic, and globally influential. But Chevy sure hit a couple out of the park in 1965, with the Corvair and the full-size cars, especially the two door versions of each. Nice find; since our neighborhood second-gen 4 door Corvair finally got sold off about 6 months ago, I haven’t seen one.
Great point about the ’65 full-size Chevrolets also being exceptionally attractive.
Joseph, your piece has put me in a proper Christmas mood by reminding me of the first car with my name on the title, a willow green ’65 500 4dr I enjoyed for seven years. It took my wife and I from Victoria BC to Nova Scotia and home to Salem,OR pretty well ending its life with us with 120k miles on the clock. I would reckon the one in your photos could likely be a Monza from the bright metal surround on the rear and rocker moldings. Only the bumpers, emblems, some interior pieces, window frames and handles were chrome on these cars as I remember. A look at the interior would give more clues to its model designation. I learned to swap out the shocks for heavy duty units every 20 – 50k to avoid swapping ends in the rain. I do miss the raspy growl from the muffler.
I’m quite sure this is a Monza minus the badges.
Alfred, how cool that a Corvair was your first purchase. Just seeing one’s name on a title is such a great feeling.
You and Paul are probably both correct about this being a Monza. Statistically, I think it would be rare for a base-model 500 to have been chosen to survive, but anything is possible. Had I written that it was a Monza, four comments might have been devoted to educating on proper badge placement, which is fine. I just wanted to demonstrate what I had read as far as external tells.
Pretty spiffy!!
I’d drive this proudly! (Funny how no one has carped about the aftermarket American Racing rims…)
I occasionally saw a couple of Corvairs in the neighborhood where I grew up, 2 and 4 door hardtops. By then I knew there were full-size Chevys with various names, the medium-size Chevelle, the small Nova, and the newer Vega that was really small. Then I saw some Corvairs and was a bit confused as to where they fit in. They seemed about the same size as a Nova, and I didn’t know about the rear engine yet. I just wondered why they made two different cars that were the same size.
The four-door hardtop is my favorite Corvair. The two-door hardtop is pretty, but as others have noted here, looks malproportioned when viewed straight-on. It looks much better in either front- or rear-3/4 shots. But no angle hides that the rear deck is rather long. Long hood/short deck proportions alone don’t guarantee great looks – the Avanti was in early on that look but it too looks great from some angles (rear 3/4) and a bit off on others. The Mustang looked great from any angle and I think that, plus a low price and lots of choices, made it the hit it was.
You make some great points about how different cars have their “best angle”, like many people feel they also do! (“Only photography me from this side…” LOL). I could see how many would have the same question you did at the time, as to why there were several Chevrolets that occupied seemingly the same market segment concurrently.
I’m one of the few who prefer the first generation’s looks .
That being said this is a beautiful automobile .
I remember my ’61 needed premium fuel and didn’t get overly good fuel economy .
I never had any handling issues and I pushed it as fast as it’d go through the canyons and mountain highways .
-Nate
Nate, I tend to flip-flop between which generation I prefer, as I do with both generations of AMC Javelin. Right now, I’m feeling version 2.0.
I agree with the comments here regarding the second-gen’s unusual proportions, and generally prefer the four-door hardtop to the two-door. That said, from certain angles, especially the front three-quarter view, the two-door is simply stunning, as captured in the first photo above.
I can remember when these were still relatively new, but never had the opportunity to ride or even ride in one. And, the Corvair did indeed exit stage left (an excellent analogy), quietly slinking away in the night. It wasn’t long before the Vega became the favorite Chevy whipping boy, further pushing the Corvair deeper into the background.
I’ve read before about how Chevrolet had managed to introduce a trouble-prone car around the turn of three consecutive decades, between the Corvair, Vega, and Citation. Thankfully, there was no such Chevrolet for 1990.
What a lovely find!
The Corvair first came to my notice in a magazine Dad bought (unusual for him; he was dyslexic), back in 1961. It looked so totally different from anything else I’d seen. Back then the rear engine thing didn’t seem so strange, VW and Renaults had the engine in the back, but it did seem unusual in a sedan this size.
Or the size I imagined it to be.
I first actually saw a first-gen Corvair in the metal about sixty years later, and was amazed how tiny it seemed; shorter, lower and narrower than I had somehow expected. Score points to the designer for those proportions hiding the size so well. Could this really have been roomy enough to carry six people?
It’s all about proportions.
Another factor that did the Corvair in would have been the changing proportions of cars during the late sixties. Tails got shorter and hoods lengthened (Mustang influence?), but the Corvair was boxed into a corner. Packaging dictated shape. It needed a long tail to cover that aft engine. By the late sixties this beautiful design’s proportions began to seem dated. It might not have looked so out of place in Europe, but compared to other American cars of the late sixties it was very much a design outlier.
I love outliers.
I’ve built several second-gen coupes, none in white though.
Thank you, Peter! I also thought this find was one of those rare, really great ones for being seen in the wild. Beautiful scale model, and that blue metallic is the perfect color on it. Corsa, no? With the argent rear panel.
I think you’re into something with respect to the Corvair’s long-ish rear being out of step with *North American* tastes, and how it probably still looked great in other parts of the world.
Because our next-door neighbors in the rural Midwest bought a new 1960 Corvair 700 four-door sedan in the fall of 1959, my early experience as a ten-year old with this car is the opposite of Joseph’s. The early Corvairs were cranky and trouble-prone but this family were mechanically adept and could cope. They loved its ability to go through snowy unplowed county roads in winter and the gasoline heater kept everyone comfortable going to church on cold Sunday mornings. A later friend had a new 1967 Corvair four-door hardtop, a better built and more reliable car. When I moved to SoCal in 1972 there were a lot of Corvairs of all types still around. I remember that co-workers who had early models continued to cope with maintenance and repair issues not experienced by those with the later models. Cool cars. I don’t remember anyone complaining about the handling nor did I have much trouble driving my 60-63 VW Beetles with similar rear suspensions. Once you got used to driving them, you compensated for the handling quirks.
Thanks for this. I had to think for a second about what might have given your neighbors’ early example (the first!) might have had good traction in the snow, but then it came to me. Rear-drive with the engine over the driving wheels. Makes sense!
Bench seats should be against the law in any mid-60s GM intermediate or compact!
If I wanted to slide all the way across something, I’d be a mug of beer in a BAR.
This brought to mind a certain song by the great Paul Simon.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iUODdPpnxcA&pp=ygUYcGF1bCBzaW1vbiBzbGlwcGluZyBhd2F5
Covairs are sadly very rare in Australia. The only one I’ve ever seen was an immaculate turquoise blue 4 door hardtop sedan.. My favourite Corvair. Stunning colour and condition.
Where the sedans offered with the high end 4 carb and turbo engines?
The turbo was only available in the Corsa coupes and convertibles, but the 140 hp 4 carb engine was available in any Corvair. It probably wasn’t often ordered for the sedans, but it would make a pretty cool car today!
I am older than you Joseph so Corvairs were relatively common when I was a teenager in Toronto. I got my driving licence in 1966 and my older brother got his 2 years earlier. We had been a one car family until then, but just before I got my licence my parents got a second car. The first car was a 1966 Oldsmobile Dynamic 88 with automatic, so my parents decided that the second car should be a standard transmission so that my brother and I could learn to drive standard. They chose a 1966 Corvair Monza with the 110hp engine and a 4 speed. I am sure that my father chose the Corvair and its options, as he was an automotive engineer and loved interesting design. My mother chose the colour “Lemonwood Yellow”, with black interior. It was a wonderful car and I did learn to drive a standard.
Apart from our own Corvair, my brother’s best friend got a red 1965 Corvair 2 door for his 16th birthday. His family was quite a bit more affluent than ours, but in order to not spoil him, they did not upgrade to the 4 speed, so he had to make do with a 3 speed.
A couple of years latter my older cousin got a 1964 Monza convertible with the same power train (110hp and 4-speed). I am not a big fan of convertibles, but I loved this one. I think the first generation convertible looks much better than the second generation convertible.
It has been a long time since I have seen a Corvair on the road, so it is great that you spotted this one. I understand why you would want a chrome strip down the side if you are driving in an urban environment, but it is not original and the car looks much better without it.
This is a poor photo of my mother’s Corvair in 1969.
That is such a great period photo – thank you for sharing it here. And that Lemonwood Yellow is such a pretty shade. My first Corvair feature here at CC was of a ’65 convertible in that color.
Late to the party here, but I’ll just make a connection to Joe’s first paragraph, about what his Grandmother said about the Corvair. In fact, some of the fondest memories I have of my own maternal grandmother are of riding in her red, 1964 (so, first gen) Monza Spyder convertible. I loved that car with its creamy white upholstery and little spider logos. Those were of course the sorts of things that would attract a first grader…which was about how old I was in those memories. We never went all that far in it (she lived at end of a 2 mile heavily-rutted dirt road which was often a bit challenging to get the Corvair down…at least for Grandmom), but I do recall that it was kind of a big deal that my mom would allow her to take us down to the store (for ice cream) or the post office (which was also the store).
Eventually, the Corvair stopped running – I suspect nowadays due to one of my 2 uncles’ inability to shade-tree mechanic it (the only sort of automotive service/maintenance they believed in). But that was by then the 1970s, and Grandmom wasn’t driving by then either. Thereby making the Corvair her last car.
Thanks Joe. Corvairs are always eye-catching.
Jeff, in turn, your recollection of riding with your grandmom then triggered my own memories of my grandma taking her grandchildren (including me) places around their area of rural NW Ohio. I cherish those memories, especially as the holidays arrive, making me think of her.
I do like that Chevrolet brought back the Spyder trim for the H-body Monza fast-hatch. I guess I never realized that the Corvair Monza had “spider” identification on it. That would also have spoken to me as a kid, even if I didn’t have any Spiderman comics.
My Dad bought a 4speed monza coupe new in 64 and I turned 15 in 65 so thats what I learned to drive and when I turned 16 it was mine.
Bill Thomas road raced them with great success and his performance parts made mine a rocket. With all that rear weight traction was king so no one in their chevy or ford could beat it off line and I added his single 4 barrel carb and headers so it would leave many in dust and in shock!
Only had it switch ends one time but my fault.
I love firsthand accounts like this. I’m sure I would have been thrilled with what was basically a one-year-old ’64 Corvair as in your case. I also really like that owners and drivers of Corvairs, last and present, seem to be a loyal bunch. As with any car, or any machine, I think a lot of it is feeling it out and learning how best to operate it, given its built-in qualities. Anyone can do things stupidly. I appreciate a thoughtful approach in everything.
My first car was a 1966 Corvair 500 model with the unusual choice of the 140hp 4 carb engine. I was 17 and in high school. I used the car in gymkanas and ralleys and it outperformed small British sports cars.
I met John Fitch at Lyme Rock racetrack which he designed, a few times and I ran time trials on that track.
The Mustang with a 6 cylinder engine cost the same as my Corvair and was a poor handling and braking car.
Currently I have a 1965 Corvair Corsa turbo convertible which is being restored..
Owning a Corvair and meeting John Fitch in person is something I can imagine was a very cool experience.
Every few years I read about these later Corvairs and feel a tickle of interest. There’s nothing quite like a tail-dragger, enginewise! Then I remember one key : four turns lock-to-lock. That should belong to a ship’s wheel, not a car’s steering wheel. Such unresponsive steering would greatly complicate skid recovery, don’yt you think?
Four turns lock-to-lock? That sounds like a whole lot. I don’t think I’ve ever driven a car with that much, though my ’76 Malibu Classic might have been close? I really don’t think so! And I also wonder if Corvairs are fun in an empty, snowy parking lot. Probably.
Four turns is not a big deal. A great many later FWD European and Japanese cars were in that range without power steering, since anything quicker than that made it hard to park without a Charles Atlas course, and did just fine. Five to six turns lock-to-lock starts to become obnoxious, and it was sometimes an issue for the Corvair and rope-drive Tempest: Chevrolet and Pontiac convinced themselves that it would discourage drivers from exploring the limits of adhesion (and make it easier for near-invalids to park), but if you DID get into a skid, there was a lot of winding involved.