Recently, we took a have a look at a solid late-production Chevy Corvair coupe in a Denver junkyard, and a few readers couldn’t consider that anybody would throw away such a rare classic. Hold onto your hats, Corvair fans, because eight Corvairs just showed up within the inventory of a yard in Colorado Springs. Because we just saw a coupe from the ultimate couple of years of Corvair production, I’ve chosen an early four-door sedan from the eightsome to follow it in this series.
U-Pull-&-Pay got the model years mistaken for many of those cars of their system, probably because deciphering serial numbers and construct tags from the pre-17-digit-VIN era requires manufacturer-specific knowledge. All eight of those Corvairs are coupes and post sedans; none are hardtop sedans, wagons, pickups, convertibles or vans.
Corvair production got here to about 2 million from the 1960 through 1969 model years, and there are still loads of project Corvairs sitting in garages and driveways, so they are not particularly hard to seek out in American wrecking yards nowadays. I’ll run across two or three per 12 months during my junkyard explorations, but finding this many directly at a U-Pull facility is a brand new experience for me.
The U-Pull-&-Pay employees I asked about these cars told me that a person brought all of them in directly and told them that he had quite just a few more Corvairs. I’m guessing that that is the results of a Corvair enthusiast with a storage lot purging unneeded parts cars.
The Corvair, with an air-cooled rear-mounted engine, was a radical design by the Detroit standards of its era and stays probably the most controversial American automobile ever made. Sales peaked within the 1961 and 1962 model years, began a gradual decline after that, then collapsed in 1966. Production continued through 1969, but by then hardly anyone was being attentive. Perhaps you blame Ralph Nader, or GM’s clumsy attempts to squash Ralph Nader, or the federal government regulations inspired by Ralph Nader, or the comfortingly traditional Chevy II/Nova, and even the Renault Caravelle.
I like to recommend that you simply read Aaron Severson’s exhaustively researched and annotated Corvair history — which begins with the event of a small-car concept at GM during World War II — so as to get the complete story.
This automobile was built during at the Oakland Assembly plant in California, where production of the Chevrolet 4-Ninety kicked off in 1916. Oakland Assembly shut down in 1963, to get replaced by Fremont Assembly (which became NUMMI in 1984 and is now the Tesla Factory) about 25 miles to the southeast. The location of Oakland Assembly is Eastmont Town Center today.
The engine is a 145-cubic-inch (2.4-liter) air-cooled pushrod boxer-six with dual carburetors and the distinctive “around-the-corner” fan belt system that looked funky but worked well. Horsepower was 80 for those who got the three- or four-speed manual transmission and 84 on cars equipped with the two-speed Powerglide automatic transmission.
This automobile does have the Powerglide, which was shifted via slightly lever under the dash, to the left of the radio.
The optional AM-only radio was a $57 option, which involves about $596 in 2024 dollars (and was value it so as to hearken to the highest hits of 1962 on a scratchy mono dash speaker). Note the scary triangle-in-a-circle Civil Defense symbols at 640 and 1240 kHz; those indicated the CONELRAD stations that might give instructions in case Tupolev Tu-95s were on their way bearing thermonuclear bombs.
Below the AM radio is a Pace CB-143 23-channel CB radio of mid-Nineteen Seventies vintage. This unit was sold across the time that C.W. McCall’s CB-centric song “Convoy” was #1 within the music charts. By the best way, you possibly can download free MP3s of C.W.’s advice to truckers crossing the Rockies on Interstate 70 — called out via mile marker — via his website.
It seems that about three a long time have passed since this automobile last saw regular use, based on this 1992 West Coast Gas magnetic dash calendar. Just by likelihood, the 1992 and 2024 calendars are the identical, including the leap day in February, so a junkyard shopper who gets this one would find its remaining months relevant for current use.
The 700 was the mid-grade Corvair in 1962, sandwiched between the bottom 500 and the sporty Monza 900. The MSRP for today’s Junkyard Gem with automatic transmission would have been $2,268, or about $23,704 after inflation. A 1963 Ford Falcon Futura sedan with two-speed Ford-O-Matic automatic began at $2,377 ($24,843 in today’s money), however it was a much bigger automobile with an actual coolant-fed heater.
Sooner or later, the owner of this automobile proudly belonged to each the Pikes Peak Corvair Club and the Corvair Society of America.
This “VAIRFIGNEWTEN” sticker have to be some Corvair Society inside joke from a long time past.
Value restoring? There’s little or no rust-through plus you’d find quite a lot of parts donors nearby, but I feel it might take at the very least $20,000 to show this into a $15,000 automobile.
Claws at trails through the glue-like ooze of Withlacoochie Swamp! Do you think that the Falcon (or Valiant) could have handled that?
This Article First Appeared At www.autoblog.com
