{"id":186,"date":"2008-04-05T19:40:00","date_gmt":"2008-04-05T19:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/new-blog\/?p=186"},"modified":"2014-03-11T15:11:10","modified_gmt":"2014-03-11T20:11:10","slug":"travelling-by-corvair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/blog\/2008\/04\/travelling-by-corvair.html","title":{"rendered":"Travelling By Corvair"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>America’s only car with an airplane-type horizontal engine!<\/span><\/p>\n

America’s only car with an independent suspension at all 4 wheels!<\/span><\/p>\n

America’s only car with an air-cooled aluminum engine!<\/span><\/p>\n

This ad for Chevrolet’s Corvair<\/a> from 1959 shows just how advanced the little car was — largely inspired by the Volkswagen, the Corvair put an ample air-cooled engine inside a compact body (although a bit larger than a VW), and championed it as the low-cost car of the future. Compare to the Corvair’s contemporaries of the late 1950s: big steel behemoths with cast-iron monstrous engines up front where they belong. The Corvair’s competition was almost entirely European imports like the VW, Volvo, and Porche, so Chevrolet was carving a new market for their vehicles, feeding American steel to the customers in need of a good ‘ol American machine, and something small and efficient for people looking for something more manageable.<\/p>\n

The Corvair, as Mr. Nader will gladly tell you, was a victim of its advanced design — that fancy suspension in the ad was prone to causing catastrophic accidents, and the rear-weighty engine location caused steering issues for drivers. Deaths, sadly, result in distrust for the new technology, and despite a much-too-late redesign with the ’64 models by ’69 the car was done. Rear-engines in American cars never really went far; the Corvair was one of the last, although Pontiac (who had also tried a rear-engine with their Polaris prototype) went with a mid-engine in the Fiero<\/a>, and Pontiac’s ex-designer John DeLorean put a rear engine in his DMC 12<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

America’s only car with an airplane-type horizontal engine! America’s only car with an independent suspension at all 4 wheels! America’s only car with an air-cooled aluminum engine! This ad for Chevrolet’s Corvair from 1959 shows just how advanced the little car was — largely inspired by the Volkswagen, the Corvair put an ample air-cooled engine […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[67,303,100,172,370,369],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1363,"href":"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions\/1363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.infomercantile.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}