So now we get to the car that I was really most interested in: the new 1965 Corvair Corsa. Its mission was to protect the turf it had carved out for itself back in 1961, when the Monza coupe was a big success, well beyond anyone’s imagination. It created a whole new category of American car: the sporty compact. That obviously was designed to appeal to import buyers, who had found well-appointed, sporty (to various degrees) compacts very compelling, driving up the import share of the market to 10% in 1959.
The Corvair mopped up a lot of them. In 1960, the new Corvair garnered a 3.6% share of the total market, imports lost 4.5 share points. In 1961, propelled higher by the Monza, the Corvair had 4.9% share of the market, while imports were down again, having lost a total of 5.0 share points, almost exactly the number that Corvair carved out for itself.
I’m not suggesting that all of its sales came from former import buyers, but undoubtedly a very healthy percentage did. But then the Mustang came along in the spring of 1964, and was an unexpected runaway success. And the Barracuda jumped in, with a similar format, offering muscular V8 performance for a very reasonable price. How would the beautiful but very different air-cooled rear-engine Corvair compare?
The big stunner was the new styling, about which there no leaks, unlike the Mustang, whose 1963 Mustang II concept was a very clear predictor of what was to come. The ’65 Corvair dropped down out of the blue, and the staff at C&D went gaga over it. And folks are still doing that today. It was a stylistic masterpiece, one that has held up incredibly well thanks to its exceptionally clean lines.
There’s a nice mini-history of the genesis of the Corvair here, for those still unacquainted with the subject.
The history continues, and asks the question just why the Monza was so successful with the sports car crowd, given that it really had very limited genuine performance chops to start with, and certainly didn’t look like the typical sports car. But something about it clicked, and undoubtedly it was the fact that unlike back in the early-mid ’50s, sports/import buyers were now more about the image than actually taking it to the track on weekends. It was sporty enough, that was the key. And it was decidedly different, in almost every respect, and that was the other half of its appeal. And folks took to calling it “The Poor Man’s Porsche”.
Yes, the turbocharged Spyder, when teamed with the optional sports suspension, kicked it some, but the steering was still somewhat painfully slow, and even turbocharged, the Spyder was never going to be a drag strip or red light type of car. But the GTO and Mustang and others of their ilk soon showed that that’s what a very rapidly growing segment of the market wanted. These weren’t former sports car buyers; these were more of the go-fast-in a-straight-line types, who appreciated a factory hot-rod when they saw it. Or secretaries and Moms who saw a cute car when they saw it.
The ’65 Corvair addressed all of the inherent limitations of its predecessor: the new IRS, largely taken from the Corvette, drastically mitigated the tendency of the rear end to become ill-behaved under certain conditions. Spring rates were adjusted. Wheel travel increased. Roll center lowered. The suspension was tuned very effectively. The result was simply the best handling American car, and by a mile. And the steering was quicker.
Obviously, at high speeds, the rear end was still going to want to run wider than the typical front-heavy understeering American car. Raise the speed more, and it’s in a classic four wheel drift. That might still not be what a lot of Americans would expect, but it was an absolute joy to those that could take advantage of it.
Car and Driver placed the Corsa right up there with the BMW 1800TI, the Alfa TI, the Volvo 122S, the Mini Cooper S, the Saab GT and the Cortina GT in terms of being an exhilarating drive for the enthusiast driver. Terrific, but that’s not exactly a very big niche of the market.
Lots of details about the Corsa’s optional 180 hp turbocharged as well as a bit about the standard 140 hp 4-carb mill. The increase from the 150hp version in ’64 presumably involved a bit more boost, as the torque rating increased to 265 lb.ft. @3200 rpm. The power peak came at 4000 rpm. It was a bit faster, with a 10.2 second 0-60 time, but hardly breathtaking, especially compared to the 271 hp 289 Mustang, with an alleged time of 5.2 seconds.
The reality is that the turbocharged Corvair engine was a mixed bag, due to the primitive technology of the time (it had no boost control whatsoever). And boost came on late, and was not fully there until about 3200 rpm, which was only 800 rpm below its power peak. It could be forced to turn up to 5500 rpm so as to be (mostly) in the boost rev range when shifting, but even then the brief moment of letting up on the gas to shift resulted in a momentary lag. It was clearly outclassed by the mostly linear power that the V8s made.
But there was much to love here, including the nicely-shifting four speed transmission, and its mostly good ergonomics, for the time. Visibility certainly wasn’t an issue!
C&D tries to mitigate the Corvair’s power delivery issues by pointing out that a base Mustang V8 would be about equally quick to 60, but that’s missing the point, as the Corsa was the top Corvair model, and the 180 hp engine was optional to boot. A more direct comparison would be a Monza with the still-optional 110 hp engine vs. the base V8 Mustang. And if the Monza had the Powerglide, it would likely be hampered further.
All that being said, in the middle of Mustang Mania, the ’65 Corvair managed to get a decent little bump in sales, to 236k. If one spreads out the ’65 Mustang’s 680k over 16 months, it outsold the Corvair by almost exactly 2:1. Not too shabby. Of course in 1966, Corvair sales started their rapid decline. The market for what the Corvair had to offer was evaporating, attacked on two sides: the Mustang on one, and a growing resurgence of small sporty imports.
Is it a coincidence that BMW’s new 1600-2 arrived in 1966? Even with its boxy gen-1 Corvair inspired styling, it was a much more compelling (and cheaper) package for the enthusiasts.
But here’s the final verdict of this comparison, by David E. Davis no less. And it’s not surprising.
The final line sums it up: “It doesn’t go fast enough, but we love it”.
The article was very good.
You’ve put me in a better mood.
-ThePoest
Alright, lets take a vote!
Should the bad rhyming continue?
It sounds kinda like a goat
C’mon, just take a vote.
We all need this to stop.
The rhymes are wet as a mop.
No, worse. Never mind.
(Nothing rhymes with never mind).
Wouldn’t it be great if today’s Corvair was a challenge to the Porsche 911. I bought a 1966 911 in 1970 when GM was on strike and could not get parts to rebuild my 1966 140 Corsa that I overheated and melted the head around the exhaust valves on one side after a fan belt toss. Drove 300 miles on three cylinders. The Porsche had 20 less horsepower and only a 2 liter engine but.did have 2 extra carburetors. I only bought German cars since but did buy my second American car last year. It is a 1965 Corsa 180.
Love the article until we see a 5.2 second 0-60 time for a 270hp 1965 mustang. A 289 auto was good for about 10 seconds 0-60…not sure 70hp knocks that time to 5.2 seconds. A 2020 Camaro V6 with 345hp is a good 5 second car…next.
That was Pre SAE 0-60. It used to be crank 0-60 they changed that in 1972 to SAE.
Thou art ever blind.
FWIU by this time GM had already decided they weren’t going to put any more money into the Corvair program after the new ’65s, and they were readying the Camaro to replace it for 1967. I don’t have any confirmation but long suspected that GM only built the ’67-69 Corvairs because doing otherwise would’ve been seen to be capitulating to Nader. Why else would they have continued the coupe that competed directly against the Camaro rather than the unique-among-compacts four door hardtop?
I read it was April 1965 when that directive came down. Definitely BEFORE anyone knew about “Unsafe At Any Speed,” much less knew when it was hitting bookshelves.
But by that time, as you stated, the Camaro was in development, and in July ’65 came John DeLorean’s unsuccessful attempt to sell the 14th floor suits on the Pontiac Banshee. I’ll speculate that the suits felt it wasn’t in anyone’s best interest that Chevy have two unique sport compacts while Pontiac had none, and besides, they wanted Pontiac to help amortize Camaro development costs with the Firebird. They probably saw Camaro, ultimately, as a design with higher sales potential and lower costs compared to Corvair…and were confident that over time, Corvair buyers could be steered into a Camaro/Firebird.
Exactly – the decision to kill off the Corvair predated “Unsafe…” but it may have had an effect on the decision to keep building the existing carline as long as they did.
Several people who were Chevy insiders at the time insist Corvair production wasn’t dragged on because of the Nader book to the present day. It was more they had just recently introduced the ’65 and the tooling hadn’t been amortized, but they quickly realized the car would never be profitable, whereas the Mustang brought much higher than Falcon money just because it looked good, without the need for so many bespoke parts like the Corvair. Chevy decided to continue building the Corvair for as long as there was some demand, refusing to update it (except for new legislation) or even advertise it in the last few years.
Several people who were Chevy insiders at the time insist Corvair production wasn’t dragged on because of the Nader book to the present day. It was more they had just recently introduced the ’65 and the tooling hadn’t been amortized, but they quickly realized the car would never be profitable, whereas the Mustang brought much higher than Falcon money just because it looked good, without the need for so many bespoke parts like the Corvair. Chevy decided to continue building the Corvair for as long as there was some demand, refusing to update it (except for new legislation) or even advertise it in the last few years.
Supposedly Oldsmobile wanted a version of the 1967 F-body, but was told “no” by GM management. Allowing the division to do the 1968 Hurst Oldsmobile – which violated GM’s ban on engines over a certain size in the A-body – was compensation for that.
The rationale was that Oldsmobile itself didn’t install the big V-8 in the Hurst Olds, although everyone involved has since admitted that this was false.
I absolutely agree that GM had no intentions of further investment in the Corvair after the 65 models. Once the Mustang came out and GM realized how much more profitable it would be it was all over. Remember, the Corvair had absolutely no parts commonality with any other models. The Camaro was their chance to badge engineer the Firebird using the same fenders and doors. The beginning of the end for unique cars from GM.
I wasn’t a Corvair fan when they first appeared and thought the update in 65 looked OK, but then something clicked after I read about the Yenko Stinger and Fitch models, and from then on – to include today – I’d love to have a 140 hp, 4 speed,convertible Corsa with those Yenko Minilite wheels in the driveway….
I had a 1964 Spyder convertible which was a couple of years old when purchased . My favorite of all the cars I’ve owned in spite of it’s limitations.
Overnight oil would leak into the heater boxes which housed the exhaust manifolds. This would result in a cloud of blue smoke that would billow from the outlets when the engine reached a certain temperature . As this would occur in the same spot on my journey I knew when to roll down the windows a bit in advance of the fogging. Nice!
Thank you, Paul, for this compilation of road tests.
At age 16 I…thought…I wanted a Mustang in 1971. But after driving a friend’s ’65 289 fastback in the rain, sliding and fishtailing all over the blacktop road, I started to doubt my desires.
A ’65 110/4 speed Corvair Monza then captured my heart and my savings account.
Equipped with a used set of Sears/Michelin X radial tires I could run off and leave any Mustang or Camaro in the frequent rain events here in New Orleans.
A terrific article to share, as it clears up a bunch of things unclear to me till now.
Firstly, that there was a sound business reason for the rear engine stuff Cole clearly loved: sold to management as a solution to having a new small car without eating the big Chevies sales. A fair-enough argument too, especially when allied with the idea that VW had sold many of the (theoretical) benefits for them already.
Secondly, on the same theme, the idea that a mildly-upward “alternative” choice could be made without risk of a foreign wierdy. That’s a sensible business base, at least for this new Corvair, since the first had worked out that way instead of as a cheapie compact.
Next, that the original investment in the Corvair wasn’t considered outrageous at $150 million, which presumably included all the new alloy casting stuff. It means, surely, that the penny-pinching on anti-roll bars, etc, was truly just negligent greed, because they were decisions made before it was released and (slightly) under-performing in the market.
Next, the tech detail of the improvements in the rear, which are profound. If nothing else, the reduction of the rear CoG from 13 to five inches!
Lastly, and perhaps most significantly of all – especially for the fools out there who’ve never actually read Nader’s book – C&D described the 1960 Corvair as one of the nastiest-handling cars ever made – in an enthusiasts magazine the year BEFORE the book was published. Now ofcourse, it’s likely the book didn’t help what was now a much better car, but surely the Corvair had by then done much of it’s own damage it’s inadequate self.
Oh, and lastly lastly, they pinpoint myone objection to this lovely-looking car: the hood is a fraction too short (and here I’d always thought it was the tail too long, but they’re right).
Anyway, this beautiful thing is certainly my choice of the three we’ve seen here in the past few days.
Having spent driving time in an early Porsche 911 and Renualt Dauphine I can verify that the first generation Corvair, WITH the factory recommended tire pressures, was not nearly as unstable and nowhere close to being “the nastiest handling” car of the early 1960’s.
C&D described the 1960 Corvair as one of the nastiest-handling cars ever made
That was said retrospectively. But try to find a C&D review of a gen1 Corvair where they actually said that. They did say the base suspension version could be a bit “queasy”, but they quite liked the ’63 Spyder they tested with the sport suspension.
It was a well known fact that the gen1 Corvair could be a handful. It wasn’t just Nader’s book. There had been a fair bit of press coverage on that, and GM had settled a number of lawsuits.
It had too much rear weight bias, for a car with swing axles, considerably more than the VW, due to the much heavier and longer engine.
It could be a ball, but it could turn viscous and bite you, or try to, under certain circumstances. Mine never bit me, bit I knew what it was capable of, and avoided those triggers, like touching the brakes in a fast curve.
As I recall the Dauphine, with its cast iron, water cooled engine, had a higher rear weight distribution than the Corvair, and a Type 1 VW lower.
Oh, the mags knew the basic car was inadequate from the off, but they were excited by its radicalism, and potential fun for enthusiasts like them and their readers. And it was in the enthusiasts mags that all the aftermarket fixes were tested and verified for enthusiasts readers. GM quickly introduced sports and stabilizer options like Empis’: and in ’64, affected the transverse spring and front roll bar as standard.
Nader quite accurately points out the unspoken rule in motoring journalism of the time, namely that “crisp” criticisms could made for benefit of readers by “car-infatuated, articulate people” but never direct strong-arming stuff, lest no more cars be forthcoming (and no ads either).
In fact, Nader quotes this very C& D article in his book, saying that the compliments for the ’65 model were “..a permissive relief against which to uncover their long-contained fury over earlier Corvair breeds”. He then quotes the not-a-sports-car-nastiest-handler bit.
For clarity, I said the opposite to it being just Naders book, other than not helping the Corvair after its ’65 publication.
He wrote in retrospect, and about the 99% of buyers who weren’t enthusiasts (possibly a bit of stretch by him there, but not too much, I reckon!) He’s writing the 1.2million buyers from ’60-63. It’d be of interest to know just how many of those cars didn’t have even the sports suspension like yours did, let alone transverse springs and anti-roll bars. Very many, would be my guess.
For years (heck, decades!) I wanted a turbocharge Corsa.
Then, finally, I was able to drive one, then another.
I was disappointed.
Unless you “kept your foot on the front bumper” the turbo 180 engine is somewhat of a timid dog around town. The 110/140 engines just feel faster and peppier in everyday normal driving conditions.
Until you “stomped the skinny pedal”. THEN the turbo spooled up and the 180 engine took off.
One thing that has always struck me about car magazine articles of this vintage (and what this series has reminded me of) is how much wonky information was included, and which the target audience presumably understood – Jounce and Rebound, Caster and Camber, degrees of advancement.Pick up a C & D today and its mostly about the infotainment screen.
One thing I’m curious about – this review states that the 0-60 times of the Corvair and “Stang are about equal at 10 seconds or so. I thought the Mustang was sub – 6 second, which was the subject of much discussion in the comments to the first review.
I agree very much with your first paragraph. You could learn so much about the technical aspects of cars back then. Now, you get such superficial reviews from the buff books.
‘Course even now I may be somewhat biased in my opinions; given what’s in the carport today..
My ’65 Monza with updated factory A/C and a working, fume-free heater.
What a terrific car. I dare say that a 2nd gen retro Corvair coupe and convertible is what GM should have built instead of the Hot Wheels Camaro that you can’t see out of.
My car crazy (wonder where he gets THAT from?) nephew bought a new Camaro coupe 3 years ago.
Thanks to 5 only partially successful knee ‘scope repairs I approached it with hesitancy and apprehension.
Sitting in the car was no problem, opened the wide and heavy door and dropped into it like a 6-1 230 pound of cement.
Getting out, I couldn’t do it thanks to my mangled knees. I made a couple of half-hearted lunges. Finally, with my right hand braced on the bottom of the steering wheel and my nephew tugging on my extended left arm, we both managed to leverage me out of the Camaro.
For some odd reason he found this much more hilarious than I did. It did became funny to me a few days later.
🙂
Been there, done that. A good way to explain why the half-bucket, half-bench style seats in old cars like the Corvair are better than the low mounted buckets seat in modern cars.
Also, a sad commentary on the passing of bench seats in nearly all of today’s vehicles (except for a few full-size trucks).
rudiger,
I liked beach seats a lot, but if the driver was a 5 foot tall woman and you were a 6 foot tall passenger they didn’t work. They really were a product of the Era when men did the driving and the women rode shotgun and looked pretty. I mention a 5 foot tall woman because that was my mother’s height. I passed her at about 10 years old and it got to the point that I couldn’t fit into the front bench seat if she was driving.
What a delightful example that is, Mr Reimer. Were those wheels available in period? If not, they should have been!
One of my top-10 favorite designs from The General.
(Also, I love seeing the vintage ads. There’s the smallest possible ad for the NSU Prinz on one of the pages. Clearly they weren’t selling many!)
Proof once again (in case we needed it) that it is hard to see history happening when you’re in the middle of it. The Corvair was a nicely styled car, but we now know it was a dead-end by 1965. The proportions were wrong (hood too short, deck too long) and the thinly pillared roof (that is my favorite part of the design) was a goner for anything in the future. The 67 Barracuda coupe has always looked to me like it was using the Corvair for influence, but those proportions was woefully out of step by 1967, and have remained so down to this very day.
I wonder if the single biggest decision that caused the death of the Corvair was John Delorian refusing to sign Pontiac up for the program. The Corvair became a single-Division car, and that single Division was the one that needed large numbers to make it pay. Even the 66 Toronado had a bunch shared with two other Divisions, so that there was a larger buy-in and sharing of expense. I wonder what it might have looked like if smaller Divisions like Oldsmobile or Buick had gotten a version of the Corvair, especially since they had nothing even remotely in the segment until much later.
I believe it was Bunkie Kundsen who ultimately stopped Pontiac from using a version of the Corvair for its compact (which had been dubbed “Pontiac Polaris” during its development). He was the division general manager at the time.
The point you make about the Corvair being a single-division car was one of the things brought up in an interesting 1969 Car and Driver article by Robert Cumberford. The article was published to mark the Corvair going out of production.
The story that’s been told is that DeLorean, his Engineering Chief, did not like the Corvair due to its handling, and pushed hard to reject it at Pontiac. ironically, his swing axle Tempest ended up with some of the same handling quirks.
In the book, Pontiac 1946-1978: the Classic Postwar Years, there is a story about Mercedes-Benz engineers staging a demonstration of how easy it was to flip a 1961 or 1962 Pontiac Tempest as compared to a contemporary Mercedes-Benz with independent rear suspension.
And there were badge-engineered Buick and Oldsmobile styling models of the Corvair while it was under development. Photos of them were published in either Collectible Automobile or Special Interest Autos in the 1990s.
I’ve seen them, and they’ve probably been posted here.
I suspect that the decision to not have Corvair derivatives for Buick and Olds must have come fairly early, as they had enough time to develop the Y Body ’61 compacts out of the Corvair body, as well as Buick developing the aluminum V8.
And I suspect strongly that the decision at Pontiac came a bit later, as the ’61 Tempest used the outer sheet metal of the F-85, except for new front and rear end treatments. No new major tooling. It wouldn’t have taken long to cut the Pontiac V8 in half, as well as cobble up the Corvair-based rear transaxle and flex drive.
I saw that photo in Collectable Automobile too; I recall the Olds and Buick variants and much less differentiation from the Corvair than the Pontiac Polaris did (and even it didn’t have much). I suspect the Olds and Buick versions didn’t get very far along before being axed, that is if they were ever considered seriously.
I wonder what it might have looked like if smaller Divisions like Oldsmobile or Buick had gotten a version of the Corvair, especially since they had nothing even remotely in the segment until much later.
A lot like the late ’70s, when all those divisions had a Vega/Monza clone. Or in the ’80s, when they all had X-car clones, or J-car clones.
The big difference being that the market for the Corvair was intrinsically limited, due to its format. That was not the case with those later cars. I doubt very much that the total sales of Corvair clones would have been all that much better if those divisions had gone down that road.
The Corvair was intrinsically an outlier. Rear engines were about to decline, in Europe, and their limitations were becoming increasingly obvious. There was a good reason DeLorean declined, as did the other divisions, although that was only superficially considered. GM would have screwed themselves if the Y Body ’61 compacts had not happened.
let’s not forget that the Corvair was a controversial project at GM that had a large number of those that were against it. Ed Cole spent a lot of political capital getting it done. But it always had a lot of haters at GM.
What I wonder is what would’ve happened if they’d been able to go directly from the Corvair to something like the FWD X-bodies by taking the (already double-jointed rather than swing axle from ’65 if not a year or two earlier) proven Corvair power unit, further modifying the axle to add steering, and moving it whole to the front of the car as Renault had done going from the 4CV/Dauphine to the R4.
That sounds impractical. An air cooled flat six, to power the next major generation of GM’s critical mid-sized cars? Seriously?
One of the key reasons air cooled engines went completely bye-bye was that they were much more difficult to clean with emission controls. That alone would have been the eventual death knell of the Corvair engine.
I could go on…
Keep in mind that the R4’s engine was behind the the transaxle, impeding on passenger space. That was a compromise layout that eventually had to give way to the transverse configuration.
Are you suggesting that the Corvair flat six would lie behind the transaxle? That’s even more outlandish. Nobody had ever done that, for good reason.
A dozen or so Cord replicas were made using this layout:
https://www.hemmings.com/stories/2014/04/21/celebration-to-mark-50th-anniversary-of-glenn-prays-corvair-powered-cord-810
The inevitable comparison between the three came down to the inevitable American driving habits: Whaddya mean I’m expected to learn how to drive a car thru curves? I just wanna stomp the gas at the green light, fly off in a straight line, and feel like I’m a race driver!
Mustang’s your car.
I originally saw it in automobiles, and had it really driven home to me in motorcycles. The average American driver wants to look cool from the moment go, and has absolutely no interest in learning the skills to back up that cool image. And American motorsport (primarily drag racing, secondarily auto races where you only turn left) fills the American need.
I will always consider my failure to ever own a Corvair to be one of the biggest shortcomings of my life.
They’re still out there, Syke…and they’re reasonably priced!
And there’s very little style penalty to taking the Four-Door Discount since the firstgens have that wonderful GM flattop look and the second, as I mentioned, is a unique compact 4 door hardtop. And either one has a shorter deck than the coupes.
I get so conflicted with what I really feel about the Corvair. It was bold, smartly styled, and so exactly what I’m attracted to; against the grain.
Then factor in I’m from Minnesota… Traction! Wait, where’s the heat? Nobody in my family ever messed with one for this reason (along with DIY apprehensive attitudes towards a flat 6).
Are you saying “Traction!” in a positive or negative way? It’s not obvious.
As to the heat, I don’t remember anyone complaining about the lack of heat in a Corvair. i had mine through a cold Iowa winter, and it was just fine.
There’s nothing intrinsically inferior about an air cooled engine in regard to heating. They throw off just as much heat as a water-cooled engine!
But yes, Corvairs tended to appeal to somewhat more adventurous or open-minded folks.
Heater output was adequate. Corvairs though did have a problem with leaky pushrod tubes, something Wayne Van Kirk alluded to above. They used o-rings on either end of each of the 12 tubes which eventually leaked into the cooling air output that supplied cabin heat. Stinky! VW used the same heater design until ’61 I think but VW used compression “donuts” on the pushrod tubes that sealed better over the long term.
Nader was right about one design defect in the Corvairs: if a log exhaust manifold gasket failed even slightly it would pump carbon monoxide into the cabin. And there were six gaskets; three per side. Pretty common now for Corvair owners to run CO detectors in the cabin.
I think the main difference between the heater in the Corvair and in the VW (and VW fans can correct me if I’m wrong) is that the VW used a heat exchanger to avoid the engine compartment smells. The Corvair blows that air right past the engine into the interior.
My ’65 Monza convertible is not the car I’d choose to drive on a cold day, but that has more to do with the fact that it’s a convertible than anything. Additionally, the thermostats that control the air doors on the engine (for cooling) are getting old, and the reproductions apparently aren’t very good. I know that my air doors open at a lower temperature than they were likely designed for originally. If I drive on a colder day, I can tell when they open, because my heat drops off by about half – it’s all blowing out the back.
VW switched to exhaust manifold heat exchangers in ’62 or thereabouts. It was called a “fresh air” heater because the cabin air no longer passed over the cylinder heads to be heated.
The Corvair blows that air right past the engine into the interior.
Actually, it doesn’t. There’s a heat exchanger, back under the rear window area. At least they got this one right, otherwise Nader would have been able to add CO poisoning to his list of grievances about the Corvair.
VW’s did have “stale air” heating util 1962, and it was a problem, with fumes and ultimately a risk of CO poisoning if the exhaust manifold rusted out. Mostly it was just fumes, from small oil leaks. It was fine in principle, as long as there were no leaks.
Paul, that’s not how the ’65-’69 is set up. There’s a heater box that contains the fan back near the engine, but it doesn’t have an exchanger.
Or I’ll qualify that…if Chevy defined anything in the box as an exchanger, it’s an ineffective one. I’ve had the oil smoke in my interior for sure in the past. I don’t have any experience with ’60-’64, but the ’65 and up routed the ducts through the tunnel in the middle of the car.
I did a bit more looking, and you’re right: there’s not a genuine “heat exchanger”. It’s more really just a distribution/mixing box, as cold air can be introduced to adjust the heat.
That’s clearly an inaccurate use of the term “heat exchanger”.
Come to think, I do remember the occasional smell of oil when a drop would find its way past the pushrod tube seals, which had just been redone on mine before I got it. So mostly it was pretty good smelling.
If I remember correctly VW’s ‘stale air” engine was a bit more safe in that exhaust gases weren’t plumbed within the cooling air tin whereas the Corvair’s log manifolds were. In either case a leaking head gasket would pump CO into the heated cabin air. As far as I know, aircraft with air-cooled engines are not allowed to use engine cooling air as cabin heat due to the risk of CO poisoning.
Most single engine light aircraft use something similar to the VW “fresh air” design, with a heat muff over the exhaust. Carb anti-ice works the same way. CO poisoning is still an issue since welded tubing, not a cast manifold, carries exhaust gasses due to weight issues. Twins use a separate gasoline heater.
Traction in a snowy winter, and in a positive. Sorry for the ambiguity there. My family on Dad’s side was firmly Mopar, and talked lots of smack then of anything not. I know their faults now, the Corvair, not so much. I just remember hearing “you’ll freeze” from aunt Vera when my cousin Rachel thought they were cute. Her husband Ralph firmly agreed. The irony is we are extremely German…
Most single engine light aircraft use something similar to the VW “fresh air” design, with a heat muff over the exhaust. Carb anti-ice works the same way. CO poisoning is still an issue since welded tubing, not a cast manifold, carries exhaust gasses due to weight issues. Twins use a separate gasoline heater.
If I remember correctly VW’s “fresh air” heat exchangers were finned cast aluminum carrying the exhaust gasses surrounded by steel sheet metal carrying heated cabin air. They put out decent volume, even for the big Type 2, and they didn’t leak CO. Gas heaters though were a dealer-installed option in the US Type 2s through (at least)1979. I bought and installed a gas heater in my Corvair-powertrain ’71 Westfalia and it only needed to be used for the first few minutes after a cold start, at which point the stale air Corvair heater was putting out a decent volume of hot air.
VW’s fresh air heaters were surprisingly effective on unrusted cars. My neighbor’s rust-free ’64 Type 1 would roast you out of the car around town at a mild 30°F, with no engine stench.
I seem to remember a Corvair ad where Chevy quoted from this article (‘the hood looks a trifle short’) and replied in response ‘Win some, Lose some’.