dibbons
Well-Known Member
I remember Andy, a kid in High School, circa 1972, had one. I see "air" was incorporated into the air-cooled Corvair name:
The post ‘65 Corvairs were decent enough, but Chevy got their *** kicked by the Mustang and had to quickly regroup on the Nova platform to keep up. The Mopar A body platform was already keeping up with the Mustang and Chevy fell quickly behind and had a lot of lost ground to make up.The pre65 swing-axle models were pretty spooky. The later models with the 4 joint IRS were a real hoot. Handled like go karts. That 140hp in that light weight hot rod was a lot of fun.
Yep!
Yes... and NO !
This one was damn near deadly.
Walked away from that crash with only a bruised elbow from hitting it on the spinning water pump pulley bolts.
"unsafe at any speed" ?
Way too unsafe with a Crown Engineering small block motor transplant.
2 years to build, one second to destroy.
View attachment 1715434333
we lost the belt on a 351C 71 Mustang on a freeway connector, long sweeping turn. We really felt it when it happened, like you said, a kick in the butt. My workmate had a corvair with an LT1 'vette motor behind the seat conversion, made it a mid engine car. Could not keep a rear end in it for some reason.My much older cousin had one in the early 60's, not sure of the car's year. He wanted to show me how quick it was. We were stopped at an intersection, the light turned green and he basically side stepped the clutch. The car jumped into the intersection and about halfway across it felt like we got hit in the rear, the car shot forward. My cousin said "oh ****". I asked what happened. He just pulled over up the road and said the fan belt broke!
Damn, that cooling fan must have taken a serious amount of HP, when it broke the car felt like a booster rocket kicked in.......
This one is always fun to watch.
It's from the vantage of a vintage (cough cough) bimmer whose driver is trying to get past Ken's 'vair and make it stick.
You'll have to continue to part 2 to see how its ends. View attachment 1715434566
ps. the corvair has drum brakes on all 4 corner since disks were never a factory option.
Rules is rules!