The NYT is on my daily reading list, but not for car-related stories, although their industry coverage by Neil Boudette is usually of a high caliber. I couldn’t help noticing this article on the front page the other day: “How GM’s First Turbo Engines Crashed and Burned”. Really? Sure, the Olds Jetfire was a bomb, but the Corvair Spyder and turbo Corsa were quite successful and never had any real issues.
Essentially, the article got it half wrong, by claiming that the turbo Corvair was just as much of a stinker as the Jetfire. Not. I guess it makes good clickbait.
Here’s my takedown of the key parts:
The issues start with their image captions:
Wrong. It was the initial Corvair that was disguised as a Holden, back in 1958. The turbo project, which didn’t start until after the Corvair was already out, certainly didn’t need to be disguised.
The Olds F-85 Jetfire and the Chevy Corvair Monza Spyder were America’s first mass-produced turbocharged passenger cars, and they were such technological and commercial flops that Detroit would shun turbos for years to come.
True about the Olds Jetfire. And fewer than 4,000 of them were built. Not true for the Corvair Spyder/Corsa, which was built in significant numbers (tens of thousands in most years) and was not a “technological flop” at all. It worked quite well, given the crude technology of the time, and was also quite reliable. It certainly wasn’t a commercial flop either.
Not even the General Motors Heritage Center’s archives — with enough documents to stuff a file drawer nearly three miles long — hint at why not one but two turbocharger projects were greenlighted in the late 1950s. While carmakers then were engaged in a horsepower arms race, gas was cheap and Detroit’s maxim was: “There is no replacement for displacement.”
There’s no need to dig through GM’s archives to find out why. GM, along with Ford and Chrysler, saw the obvious need for compact cars for 1960, and once they had been developed, the interest in making higher performance versions was inherently compelling. Chrysler had its Hyper-Pak kit for the slant six, which turned it into quite the speedy compact. Ford came very close to introducing a three-carb hi-po version of the 144 six, which had been developed and ready to go. All three were engaged in the NASCAR compact series, and small, sporty cars were the hot new thing, inspired by the success of European sports/sporty cars and the sporty Monza that arrived in mid-year 1960. The horsepower race was not just limited to big cars. That would play itself out very obviously with the pony cars that arrived in 1964.
Each of the divisions had massive engineering budgets as well as a high degree of autonomy back then. But they also knew mostly what was being developed technically; the fact that Chevy and Olds took decidedly different approaches to dealing with the challenge of detonation strongly suggests that there was some coordination.
The concept of turbocharging is easy to understand. The turbo uses the exhaust gases from an engine to spin a tiny turbine, which in turn spins a second turbine. That second turbine sends a pressurized, concentrated mix of fuel and air into the cylinders for a more power-packed charge. It also burns more completely, which increases fuel efficiency.
There’s nothing about a turbo that makes the fuel charge “burn more completely”.
Even without a turbo, heat was a challenge for the Corvair’s air-cooled aluminum engine. But the issue intensified with turbocharging.
“The full output of the engine cannot be cooled!” Mr. Benzinger exclaimed. Chevy assumed “the driver would either run out of road or run out of guts before the engine overheated,” he added.
In tests, the turbo engine burned holes through the valves. The engine needed a belt-driven cooling fan, but belts failed at top revolutions per minute, owing to the weight of the fan. So Chevy worked with DuPont to make a lighter fan from a promising new plastic, Delrin, which caused an even worse problem.
After a trip from Detroit to Ohio, a test driver told Mr. Benzinger that as he accelerated from a tollbooth, “I started to choke, and my eyes started burning.”
A frantic search for the cause was begun, leading to a convoy of four Corvairs retracing the route, each with one engineer from Chevrolet and one from DuPont. Theories varied, postulating a problem with Toledo air or static electricity generated by the fan. They drove the route radioing back and forth, “Smell anything yet?”
In the Ohio cold, with the heater on full blast, so much current ran through the battery in the hot engine compartment that it essentially boiled. Vaporized battery acid reacted with the Delrin to make formaldehyde gas, which flooded the cabin. The potential casualties, Mr. Benzinger said, caused him to “shudder to this day.” A cast aluminum fan was substituted.
This whole section is essentially irrelevant and substantial parts are untrue. It appears different issues were mixed up. The 1962-1963 turbocharged Spyder did not have any cooling issues and used the exact same steel cooling fan as the non-turbo cars. In 1964, a new lighter magnesium fan replaced the steel one across the Corvair line, not because of a need for more cooling air but because it reduced the “flywheel effect” that tended to throw the belt that drove it. That was not a turbo-related issue. In fact, the turbo engine made its maximum power at the same 4,400 rpm as the 110 hp non-turbo engine.
GM may well have experimented with a plastic fan, but all of this has nothing to do with the Spyder’s turbocharging and the fact that it did not have any notable cooling issues.
The death of the Corvair was due not to the turbo but to Ralph Nader. His 1965 book, “Unsafe at Any Speed,” painted the Corvair as a deathtrap, ushered in an era of consumer activism and led to the founding of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The single biggest fallacy of the Corvair gets regurgitated endlessly: The Mustang killed the Corvair. Not. Nader’s book didn’t come out until late 1965. By then the Corvair’s handling issues were fully resolved, but the Mustang was outselling the Corvair by massive margins. As a consequence, Chevy was rushing the development of the Camaro. Nader’s book was essentially a postscript to the history of the Corvair.
There’s no point in repeating the article’s write-up on the Jetfire, as it was obviously terribly underdeveloped, and a technological flop—unlike the turbo Corvair, which was built in significant numbers from 1962 through 1966, and did not have any real issues other than some turbo lag, not surprisingly.
In 1978, the Saab 99 had offered the first turbo on a production car since G.M.’s misfires. “The very first Saab turbos were not reliable cars,” said Jim Smart, owner of the Saab specialist Smart Motors in Santa Fe, N.M. “To make it work really well needed advanced engine management.”
No, the first production turbo car after the Corvair and Jetfire was the 1965 International Scout, then the 1973 BMW 2002 Turbo and then the 1975 Porsche Turbo, which still beat the Saab to market by three years.
So much for automotive history at the Times; it’s just not their strong suit. Maybe they should stick to what they do well, which is a lot. Like this opinion piece by Ezra Klein on Afghanistan which was as the single best article I’ve read on the subject yet. Highly recommendable.
is this article’s thrust just so much hot air?
CC’s (accurate) coverage of these two: Olds Jetfire and Corvair Spyder
Very interesting, and enjoyed the read. I’m sure I’ve seen a Jetfire, way back when, but likely had no idea what it was at the time. I do recall a lot of satisfied turbo Corvair drivers.
Given the NYT’s record of poor accuracy or skewed reporting, especially in the last couple of decades, these errors do not surprise.
Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect
Wow I knew it was clickbait and never tried to read it, but wow that was really bad.
Excellent analysis of this way off article. But, I have one nit to pick. There is no such thing as “pre-detonation”. Preigintion and detonation are two distinctly different conditions. Detonation is the destructive one, an “explosion” instead of progressive burn after the spark event.
Corrected now. Thanks.
I, too read the NYT (my library offers free e-access). This article rubbed me the wrong way as well, but I probably couldn’t have pinpointed all the missteps as succinctly as you have. Also, thanks for directing me to the Afghanistan piece. That problem has been a long time coming/running.
I read the article, too.
I think most of it was based on the recollections of the guy who’s Jetfire was pictured and who was interviewed quite extensively – Jim Noel.
That being said, it was a pretty neat story, especially regarding the Jetfire.
I stopped reading the NYT in the ’80s, at a time when I agreed with them politically. It’s just a crappy product in every way. Bad reporting, bad writing, bad proofreading, bad printing. Every mid-market paper was better in every way.
Good reporters know who to call. A good reporter on this subject would have called one of the Niedermeyers!
they write for their audience which demands the party line – and are met w/ threats of cancellation whenever they stray
NYTimes has to do that because they are in precarious financial health
With $1.2-odd billion USD in subscriptions and $400 million-odd in ad revenue in 2020, and two increases in shareholder dividend in a year, not to mention $1 billion of value in their own NY offices (repurchased from a leaseback in 2019) and large cash reserves, I doubt a finance guy would regard their position as precarious, surely?
because they are in precarious financial health
Gee, I wonder where you got that from? From the man that lied 30,573 times over four years?
The NYT is in very sound financial health, with a $73 million dollar profit in the 2nd quarter alone.
Seriously, we do not allow this kind of regurgitation of “fake news”. It goes against our commenting policy.
+1, Paul. Well stated.
Utter nonsense. The NYT is still the newspaper of record in the U.S. And, by virtually every metric, is on sound financial footing. Feature articles like this one are not its strong suit, but it’s hard news coverage is superb, as the Klein article demonstrates.
Polistra, I disagree unequivocally with your statement, It’s just a crappy product in every way. Bad reporting, bad writing, bad proofreading, bad printing.” If it is so bad, it should be easy to name many that are better. So name three better daily English language American dailies.
“Every mid-market paper was better in every way.” Was?
In my neighborhood when growing up, I was more aware of the Oldsmobile Jetfire than the turbocharged Corvair, because there were two of them, both 1963, a burgundy one that was seen more frequently, and a blue one. They were easily recognized by the broad white trim striping on their sides, outlined in chrome. Lesser F-85s such as the Cutlass had a chrome strip, or only a partial one. The same trim distinguished the 1962 Jetfire but I only saw the two 1963s and I preferred the clean slab sides of the 1963 F-85, Pontiac Tempest and Buick Special/Skylark anyway.
The contrast between Furchgott’s hack job on the early GM turbos and Klein’s well-reasoned, thought-provoking opinion piece on Afghanistan is telling more on where the NYT’s priorities are than the former is on the entire organization.
Automotive history is filler to a general-interest newspaper, probably written in a couple hours weeks in advance to be plugged in in the event of a slow news day or a missed deadline. Global geopolitcs is a core reporting area and something they put a lot of resources into reporting and a lot of thought into opining on. Which is as it should be. There are plenty of places one can go for good automotive-history studies.
This is one of them.
+1
Very much agreed. Which is why I never go to their automotive section “Wheels”. In fact, looking at their menu, Wheels doesn’t even show up there. They’ve been reducing automotive coverage steadily for some time.
This was on the front page and caught my eye. Since there’s no one there with the knowledge to catch or edit this, it’s not surprising. But my recommendation for them is to stick to what they do well, which they mostly do very well, better than anyone else.
This was not intended as a put-down of the Times in general.
Paul, I read a similar article in the NYT titled “The Long, Halting Trip of Turbo Engines” by Roy Furchgott and dated August 27, 2021.
He states the Saab 99 offered the first turbo on a production car in 1978. Obviously not correct as has been pointed out. It is also incorrect because Furchgott does not mention the 1978 Buick Regal which did offer a turbo on the 3.8 liter 231 cu. in. V6. He also left out the 1980 and 1981 Turbo Trans Am.
GM next did for diesels what they did for turbos earlier on
Mr nlpnt, above, makes a very good point, and it’s probably the reality.
But in the great scheme of things, it’s still not good that such a major news organ could be so sloppy on stuff even if it’s peripheral to much of their readership. It has the effect of diminishing the carefully-won reputation of the paper: I understand that CC, for example, has a decent readership beyond the comments, so some flecks of damage on the ‘net from this exposure here doesn’t help their standing. (Not suggesting for a moment they don’t deserve anything but a kick up the backside for this article, btw – to rehash the Nader trope is just says it all, really).
One thing I can’t find a ready answer to that the NYT piece inadvertently raises – about how many of the 1.8 mill Corvairs built had the turbo engine? I ask only because if the figure is say, 10%, then by the giant numbers in the US car industry, THAT might be considered a bit of a sales flop.
I already commented at nlipnt’s comment, along similar lines. The NYT has been reducing its automotive coverage steadily for years. I never read it for that, except for the occasional industry coverage by Neil Boudette. It’s simply not an area of competence (or priority) for them, and frankly, they might best just drop it all together.
As to the Corvair’s turbo engine sales, they ran roughly 10% or so in their main years. Since the turbo was a significantly more expensive package, that was actually quite a healthy number, certainly much higher than the percentage of early Mustangs with the K-Code 271 hp 289, or other top-performance versions of other car lines.
The Corvair Spyder was never expected to sell in really large numbers. I am quite positive that it certainly met or quite likely exceeded Chevy’s internal expectations. The Spyder was commonly seen, and was very much not a rare wall-flower type of car. There’s simply no way to say that it was a dud, in terms of what it was (top tier hi-po version).
Indeed, and it’s still 150,000 or so cars, all at a (presumably) more profitable level of spec apart from the turbo. (I should explain, I meant to put my last line as a question, as I’ve gathered largely from this site that x or y car described as a sales dud in US terms would often be considered a sales marvel just about anywhere else).
Also:
> In 1978, the Saab 99 had offered the first turbo on a production car since G.M.’s misfires.
> Until the Buicks of the ’80s, “G.M. didn’t touch another turbo,”
Nope, GM’s Buick introduced their turbo 3.8L V6 at the same time Saab did in 1978, available in the Regal and LeSabre. This engine, in turbocharged, supercharged, and normally aspirated form, would become legendary for it’s reliability and performance.
Saab certainly advanced the art of turbocharged engines, being in early on the four-cylinder, DOHC 16V intercooled turbos that would later become nearly ubiquitous in upscale sedans. But I’d stop short of saying “the word turbo became synonymous with Saab” in the ’80s. At that time I associated turbos with Porsches, Buicks, and various Japanese cars as much as with Saab.
As for the Jetfire, I don’t think it became well enough known to damage the reputation of turbos. Quite unlike how the unreliable ’70s/’80s Olds diesel V8 damaged the reputation of diesel engines in America for years to come.
I’d look at it the other way though, Saab was the one manufacturer where when you thought of Saab (at least starting in the 1980s), turbos instantly come to mind. While BMW, Porsche, Buick, Chevy etc may have beaten them to market, none of them embraced it (or marketed it?) quite as much. Yes, the majority of 1980s Saabs worldwide were likely not turbocharged but they made a lot of hay on that rep and while Saab certainly has its detractors, very few Saab turbo owners belong to that group as far as I can anecdotally tell. Most have happy memories of their ownership while recounting stories that might make owners of more “normal” cars look quite askance at them.
There’s an important lesson to be learned when you read an article about a subject you know well and find that the level of accuracy is laughable. It is a reflection of the fact that you shouldn’t be reading the journal that contains the article expecting to learn the truth about subjects which you’re not familiar with.
That’s often how I feel when I see articles in the popular press about pipe organs (granted, not very many these days). When these articles try to address how these beasts work, it’s usually pretty laughable.
My family were Corvair fans. My mother had a 66 Monza coupe (110hp 4-speed); my cousin had a 64 convertible (also 110 hp 4-speed), which was my favourite. My uncle, the car guy in the family had a 65 Corsa coupe with the turbo. He lived in Toronto near the then brand new Don Valley Parkway. He decided that that early Sunday morning it would be a great place to try out the performance of the turbo. He was very indignant that he got a serious speeding ticket. I think that that was the only complaint he had about the car.
News used to be regarded as a good unto itself, and that drove high quality even in less-than-hard-news stories like this one. Now news is treated primarily as a revenue stream. Hence the clickbait headlines and the slack (if any) fact-checking—if articles are checked at all, it seems they’re more likely vetted to ensure they won’t upset advertisers.
Even the more reliable news outlets seem no longer to apply the stringent standards that used to be bedrock and topsoil. Copyeditors are something of an endangered species, so we see badly sloppy writing and wrong words—just yesterday I saw in the Los Angeles Times that an unruly crowd were “disbursed”; no, that word means a payout from a fund; actually the crowd were dispersed. Worse, journalism’s prime directive—check your facts!—seems now to be regarded as an option to be given maybe a quick thought if there’s time. Me, I think life was better when articles had to be vetted by editors for factual accuracy and comprehensible writing.
The article linked in a CC comment thread not long ago is another example about as pathetic as this NYT piece about GM’s early turbo cars.
Another—which I will not link—crossed my screen a couple days ago, in which a man labouring under the delusion that he is a writer—he’s a member of the newspaper’s editorial board—spent many column-inches bitching about how the MAF (mass airflow sensor) in his Nissan failed, leaving him by the side of the highway and confirming his suspicion that there are way too many sensors in cars and this headlong rush toward driver assistance and autonomous cars needs a sober second thought, because “when vehicles are hijacked by defective sensors, the consequences have sometimes been fatal for people in the vehicle”. Hello, non-sequitur much? All under the headline Who’s in Control When We’re Behind the Wheel?, and starting with this ignorant, sensationalist, ginned-up nonsense: When I’m behind the wheel, I like to think I’m in charge. Unfortunately, our car recently rejected its normal subservience and showed us who’s boss (…) why had the car seized the initiative to disable itself? The mystery was solved the next day by a mechanic who found the culprit: a sensor had malfunctioned and erroneously immobilized the car. When working correctly, the sensor apparently calculates the amount of air entering the engine. In short, the car was mechanically sound, but the sensor mistakenly “thought” there was a problem and took it upon itself to disregard the driver’s instructions and shut down the home stretch of our trip. (…) Sensors are supposed to warn of possible problems, not wage mechanical mutiny and take control of the vehicle.
So this “MAF sensor” business is just way too much computerisation of cars, and he…wants to…what? Go back to carburetors? Oh, much better; those never ever failed or anything.
(And don’t even get me started about the mountain of articles about vehicle lighting, most of which get it wrong.)
Well said. I’m not at all a fan of the prospect autonomous cars either but that non-sequitur example is so absurd it does the author no favors if he wants to convince anyone on the fence or spread the word. The driver rarely had any more control of balancing the air fuel ratio with a carburetor than with a mass air EFI system, only unlike a carburator when it “seizes” control of the car a MAF can usually be unplugged and limped home on the base fuel tables, and it’s a couple screws and a hose clamp or two for the mechanic to replace. That opposed to pulling the carb, disassembling it on a bench, dunking things in solvents, brushing and scrubbing down what’s reusable, replacing various gaskets, springs, floats, jets etc, putting it back together, tuning it, test driving it and tuning it some more.
I now realize, for the first time, that my old Pontiac J2000 didn’t just break down, but was hijacked by its carburetor…
So when I stripped down and rebuilt the Weber on my old Cortina, I was performing the seventies equivalent of automotive brain surgery? 🙂
There was another wrinkle to Mr. Benzinger’s story as he related it to us at, IIRC the 1975 CORSA meet in Seattle.
One of the four cars with the delrin fan had a faulty voltage regulator which caused the over charging condition of the battery and subsequent outgassing of sulfuric acid.
This was before the solid state regulators came out, and were an occasional failure point in those years.
I don’t miss that technology at all.
Thanks Paul, I saw that article and thought it would get a rise out of you. You didn’t disappoint.
The turbocharged Corvair was indeed a success and the Olds could have been if the compression ratio wasn’t so high.
These sorts of articles as a lifer car enthusiast make me simultaneously cringe and wince, probably because it’s like something I would have written as an essay when I was in 6th grade. Reminds me why I enjoy CC so much.
Perhaps the NYT writer misunderstood (to say the least) how a turbocharger works. I have read claims that … “The compressor wheel provides compressed air to the engine, and this compressed-air makes the fuel burn more efficiently for greater power and fuel economy.”… (from Garrett Turbo website).
Possibly they misunderstood the difference between ‘efficiently’ and ‘completely’. Maybe Garrett’s claims are not well founded either. Media do sometimes overstate technical language, if only to add sensationalism or credibility.
I’m no engineer, and cannot comment technically other than to say the Times is usually very good at their reporting, but bungled this one. A good technical editor would have needed to go over this piece very carefully. Well critiqued Paul.
Footnote – Ezra Klein’s article is succinct, and well written. It’s unfortunate that the U.S. has spent so much and achieved a long term result so disappointing as Afghanistan. $2 Trillion, untold losses of human lives and equipment.
It is all very regrettable.
A shared, international approach Klein advocates would be a fine goal to achieve, but any agreement on how to proceed would inevitably be too challenging.
We can’t even get to the bottom of what started this global virus.
A consensus out of the G7 leaders? Never mind G20. It’s the world we live in, we will have to get more and more used to regimes such as the Taliban taking over lands and trampling all over human rights and democracy. It’s not an outcome I would advocate.
Klein has one good, if completely obvious point, to wit, those of the ruling class in both parties and the defense and foreign policy establishment that thought they knew so much actually knew very little. A point this simple Marine infantry officer realized 17 years ago. He is wrong about another, the complete ineptitude of the present withdrawal does in fact have serious, wide-ranging and long lasting consequences. Finally, it must be assumed that he is intentionally deceptive about a third, he credits the current President for choosing to depart, and leaves completely unmentioned all actions taken under the previous effectuate the end of the mission. D- at best. Typical present day journalism.
My Latin teacher in the mid 70’s was a crusty old Englishman with a first gen Corvair coupe. I don’t remember if it was a Spyder or just missing a muffler, but when he hit the gas, it was LOUD. It was scary enough riding a bike at rush hour without him passing me.
No doubt the writer complaining about all the sensors is not neutral about carbon, mon or di.
I had the same issue with my insurer, Shannons. They have an online club and an article there was making the same claim. Written by a motoring journalist who should have known better, who also ignored the BMW turbo.
It’s damn annoying, more so when it’s from someone who should know better.
While I dont remember actually seeing a Jetfire, I did see the turbo, carb, intake manifold assembly for sale at a swap meet decades ago. Instantly recognized it from the ’62 Olds brochure in my collection that I acquired from the LA Auto Show.
I really like the NYT food articles. Nothing else. They haven’t managed to ruin that yet. Sometimes they do an OK job on stuff that isn’t important.
Paul – we see you as an extremely knowledgeable expert regarding automotive history, etc. Don’t you think that if you sent this write up to the NYT – they’d mention it? Do you believe the NYT would listen to you on this subject? This isn’t a political subject, so I don’t see them objecting to any corrections. You deserve the recognition and more people need to know about your work, right?
Just another huge fan,
AL
Great idea; the NYT could run Paul’s rebuttal as a Guest Essay, their new term for Op-Ed.
Nice takedown. My Dad owned a ’64 Spyder and that turbo was one of the more reliable aspects of the car. Keeping gasoline from escaping was the main problem that sure kept him busy for years, but what finally did in the relationship was an expensive and time-consuming sounding lifter knock.
My Denmother actually had an early Olds Jetfire Turbo. The suspicious thing about it was that at the time she bought it her older son was about ready to get his driver’s permit. Lived on the same block, got a private showing from her sons. They liked the car. Didn’t like going to the dealer for fluid though. Her husband was a doctor with a busy practice and I think either she had to go herself or her son had to usually walk to dealer. They didn’t keep it long even though everyone thought it was quite attractive..
Paul, the Automotive section has the Wheels articles in it. I don’t know if the section has been renamed for the weekend, in general, or what. I read the article when it came out. I was appalled and wrote a comment saying that the article was poorly researched and factually incorrect. I pointed out several of the errors, including the Mustang being the reason for the demise of the Corvair and the Chevy II being a contributing cause. I explained the desire by Buick to have a high compression ratio (to improve torque and fuel efficiency) and therefore the need for anti detonation fluid. I pointed out the lighter fan was made of magnesium. I suggested they get someone who actually wrote about cars for a living, or even as a hobby, the next time they need a car article. My comment was not published. Having written a very critical comment about another article previously that was also not published, I get the impression the corporate skin is not very thick. Also, for those of you with really good memories, Car and Driver did a project Opel in 1975-6 that they turbocharged. It got better mileage as well as more power. So in the bad old days of carburetors, mild turbos could improve performance in several way.
I do read the other Wheels articles and many are more interesting, being in fields I don’t know much about. The lithium mining was interesting.