Corvair

They sure used to know how to sell them. They almost make it look safe. This is the target of the "Unsafe at Any Speed."

When Knudsen took over the reins of Cherolet in 1961, he insisted that he was given corporate authorization to install a stablizing bar in the rear to counteract the natural tendencies of the Corvair to flip off the road. The cost of the change would be about $15 a car. But his request was refused by The Fourteenth Floor as 'too expensive'. Bunkie was livid. As I understand it, he went to the Executive Committee and told the top officers of the corporation that, if they didn't reappraise his request and give him permission to make the Corvair safe, he was going to resign from General Motors. This threat and the fear of the bad publicity that surely would result from Knudsen's resignation forced management's hand. They relented. Bunkie put a stabilizing bar on the Corvair in the 1964 models. The next year a completlely new and safer independent suspenion designed by Frank Winchell [the 'diagonal pivot swing axle' by the way] was put on the Corvair. And it became on the of safest cars on the road. . . . There wasn't a man in top GM management who had anything to do with the Corvair who would purposely build a car that he knew would hurt or kill people. But, as part of a management team pushing for increased sales and profits, each gave his individual approval in a group of decisions which produced the car in the face of the serious doubts that were raised about its safety, and then later sought to squelch information which might prove the car's deficiencies. . . . In April of 1971, 19 boxes of microfilmed Corvair owner complaints, which had been ordered destroyed by upper managment, turned up in the possession of two suburban Detroit junk dealers. When The Fourteenth Floor found this out, it went into panic and we at Chevrolet were ordered to buy the microfilm back and have it destroyed.[End of excerpts] LiveLeak

I used to know someone who claimed to own a 66 Corvair. Never laid eyes on it. It didn't run. I helped a buddy put an old TA on the road. We drove it to Florida. That story is done and dusted. I suppose it could have been worse. We might have tried a Lotus.