In 1960, General Motors introduced the Chevrolet Corvair as a challenge to the Volkswagen “Beetle”. It was powered by a 6-cylinder, 165 cc, air cooled rear engine. The car was produced through 1969, during its run some 1.9 million cars were made. The general belief is it was discontinued because of negative press from Ralph Nadar, a well-known U.S. consumer activist at the time who had written a book about the first generation Corvair called Unsafe at any Speed. The Ford Mustang was introduced in 1964 ½ and despite Nadar’s book, I suspect the Mustang drove the final nails in the coffin for the Corvair.
My car is a 1965 Corvair Monza Coupe. The Corvair was redesigned considerably in 1965 so it is basically the second (and last) generation. The air-cooled rear engine is a 2.7 L flat-six cylinder. In 1965 GM offered three engines for the Corvair. The base engine was rated at 110 HP (it had two single one-barrel carburettors and a single exhaust system), there was a 140 HP version (four single one-barrel carburettors and dual exhaust) and a 180 HP turbocharged version, my car started life as the 110 HP version. The car is yellow with black interior and has a 4-speed manual transmission. What sets my car apart from most Corvairs is the car has been in the family since it was purchased new in in 1965 by my older sister. She bought it from the Chevrolet dealer located in Dalhart, Texas (a small town in the Texas Panhandle where my sister was working – very near where we lived). I still recall the family going to Dalhart one evening to see the car shortly after she bought it. A year later to my surprise, my father asked me if I would like the car (of course I said yes) and I drove it during my last two years in high school. The first “custom item” I put on the car was to install a set of front seat belts (seat belts were not required on cars in the US until 1969). As I was in high school, it was more of a “cool thing” to have seat belts than any genuine concern I might have had about safety. In 1968 when I went to university, I “upgraded” to the family 1963 Impala (a much larger car). My younger sister then drove the car until 1976. As the car was setting outside in full West Texas elements and as I had asked my father to keep the car for me, he built a small tin barn behind the family home and in 1978 parked the car where it set until I retrieved it in 2000. In 1977 he had the car resprayed by the local crop duster that lived in my town who also painted cars and farm equipment when he was not flying his plane over the local fields. Although there are now a few dings on the car, the 1977 paint job (lead paint of course) still looks very good.
In 2000 I changed jobs and as the family was moving from Houston to Connecticut, I took advantage of my new company’s moving policy to ship the Corvair so it was time to go pick it up. I drove from Houston to my home town of Hartley, Texas with a flatbed trailer attached to my car to pick the Corvair up. When my father parked the car, he just parked it in the tin barn, filled the petrol tank (leaded gas) disconnected the battery and locked the door (the car was put not on blocks). Before the car was shipped to Connecticut, I could not resist the call to get her started once again. I had a mechanic friend who came to the house one Saturday morning and we set about minor preparatory work such as changing the oil, plugs and points. In anticipation that the petrol tank would be completely empty after the 20+ years of evaporation setting in storage, I began filling the tank only to find that it was full after taking less than a litre. Evidently very little petrol had evaporated. After clearing a gum plug in the petrol line where it came out of the tank, the car started and ran on the 22-year-old leaded gas!
The car was in excellent condition for its age but it still needed breaks and a good tune. At this stage in the restoration process I began to realised one thing, there were not very many mechanics near our home in 2000 that could work on the car (a similar situation 20 years later when the car was in the UK that I found much more challenging, finding someone who could work on the car).
In 2001 we moved from Connecticut to England for a two-year assignment so the ‘Vair went back into storage. We returned to Connecticut in 2003 but as fate would have it in 2005 another job opportunity arose in London. As we thought this was a permanent move the car came with us.
Before this move to London, I made my second “upgrade” after the seat belts, I installed a set of wire “knock off” hubcaps on the 13-inch wheels (something I could not afford in high school). After a successful move, along with the rest of our household goods in the container, she became “English” in the summer of 2005. I kept her at a friend’s house located about an hour South of London (a small village in Surrey called Nudigate) so it was somewhat difficult to find time to work on her. However, after successfully obtaining a UK title and passing her MOT, the ‘Vair became “street legal” in August 2007 and for the first time since 1978 I could legally drive her again. That same August, I took her to her first ever car show in Caple, Surrey.
In 2008 a new job opportunity came up and we moved from London to Chicago (the ‘Vair came with us) and for the first time I was able to continue with the restoration process on a somewhat more regular basis. We now had a large two-car garage so I had space to work on the car. I took her to several car shows during our two years in Chicago and was fortunate to find a mechanic that specialised in Corvairs so she finally became mechanically “right.” This chap is widely considered one of the premier Corvair mechanics in the US, fortunately for me we struck up mutual friendship around the Corvair and to this day I still call on his expertise on a host of issues that come up with the car. As fate would have it, in 2010 we moved from Chicago to Singapore for what we thought was a one-year assignment that in the end lasted eight years. Before leaving Chicago, the car went into a tin commercial storage unit where she set awaiting my return. In 2018 my wife and I returned to London. I had a mechanic in Chicago pick her up from storage and once again get her running properly and ship her back to me. She arrived back in London in January of 2019 to her permanent home.
Apart from the front seat belts, 1976 respray and wire spoked hubcaps at this point the car was basically the same as when I first drove her.
Since 2019 I have completely replaced the interior (carpet, door panels, head liner) and added a proper stereo system. Apart from the head liner, I did all the interior restoration work myself. Three years ago, the car needed the rings replaced and finding someone who would take on the job proved a real challenge. I finally found a group and what should have been a relatively simple task turned out to be a three-month process. I had considerable other work done, front wind screen leaked and needed to be reset, starter motor was a bit wonky and was replaced (they did the headliner) petrol tank needed to be replaced and I had an issue with the left rear window, it would not roll all the way down. I have learned along the way that there are a couple of things that many Corvair owners do to upgrade their car, those with the 110 HP, want a 140 HP engine and install two more carburettors (along with dual exhaust) and a lot of Corvair owners upgrade the 13-inch wheels to 15-inch wheels. As the engine was to be removed for the ring job, I thought this was the ideal time to add the second carburettors. There is a vendor in the US called Clark’s Corvairs that sells basically anything you need for the a Corvair and can generally have it delivered to the UK in 3 to 4 days. They have a 4X1 conversion kit for the car so getting the parts to do the carburettor conversion was quite easy, getting the car properly tuned after the conversion was another matter altogether. The car ran fine when they tested it but on my return trip home as I was entering London, I heard a large bang (backfire) and the car would no longer idle. Because of the lack of idle, the car was not drivable so I put it on a truck and sent it back to the group that had done the work. While their heart was in the right place, after a second failed attempt to get the car running properly, I realised that while the group was a high-end body restoration operation that did amazing work, they were not engine people and the lowly Corvair engine was beyond their abilities. I had just spent quite a bit of money on the car so I had to find someone who could tune it so it could be driven. I contacted one of the UK Corvette clubs on the theory that someone that could work on a ‘Vette’s engine (being GM) could hopefully work on a Corvair engine. I was introduced to a mechanic who had worked on Corvairs so left it with him, cautiously optimistic. While he did improve the running, the car idled much faster than it should have and after driving it for a few weeks started backfiring again. After continuing my search for someone who could set the carburettors properly, a petrol head neighbour, through his network, suggested a group near Gatwick that specialised in race cars (multi carburettors). The car was shipped to them and after a couple of days with them, it now runs like it was designed (no more backfiring).
A couple of weeks ago I believe I have added my last upgrade. I have always felt the 13-inch wheel visually was too small for the car so recently upgraded to a set of 15-inch wire knock off wheel’s which I am very happy with.
The car is great to take to shows because so very few people had heard of the Corvair, let alone seen one. I often show the car with boot/trunk open and when people realise that there is not an engine in the front, they immediately come to the rear where they discover where the engine lives. I have lost count of the number of times I have over heard a young boy or girl saying “daddy, why is the engine in the back”. While there is not a Corvair Club in the UK, there is a Facebook chat group that most UK Corvair owners are members of. We recently did an extensive survey amongst the group trying to determine how many runners there were in the UK, our current best estimate stands at 23, and only about half show their cars. Considering the number of car events held in the UK each year, it is understandable why so few people here have actually seen a Corvair.
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