3 wheel fun :D
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penski said:
*n
Ev0 said:Funny thing is, that's just a road car doing it, all the others are race cars
Most FWD hatches will lift a rear wheel if you are really pushing on.
Who remebers the Watchdog report a few years back about (I think) the Saxo VTS lifting a rear wheel when driving up a kerb into a driveway? The incompetant plebs were giving Citroen a grilling saying how dangerous it was
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That's been a Clio trait for a long time - it's still very much in control I think it looks awesome. 
JRS said:
Mickey_D said:
Have either of you ever actually read any of Ralph Naders books????
All he ever wanted GM to do was put anti roll bars (sway bars) on the Corvair "like the hotrodders do".
A better title for his book would have been "Speed Is Safer Than Driving To Silly Speed Limits".
He was as keen on cars as anyone, he just wanted the best for the general public, instead of the big corporations running roughshod over us telling us, this is what you want, it's safe,........ honest guv!!!!!
.The updated edition of Nader's book included 100 pages of the positive results of his investigative journalism and successful court battles with automakers. In 1965, American automotive journalists loved Nader's redesign of the Corvair, extolling the Corvair's new high-performance handling instead of murdering its owners.
Read the Wiki entry on his book here
From the Wiki entry on Ralph himself
In 1965 Nader released Unsafe at Any Speed, a study that purported to demonstrate unsafe engineering of many American automobiles, especially the Chevrolet Corvair and General Motors. GM tried to discredit Nader, hiring private detectives to tap his phones, investigate his past, and hiring prostitutes to trap him in a compromising situation [5],[6]. GM failed to turn up any wrongdoing. Upon learning this, Nader successfully sued the company for invasion of privacy, forced it to publicly apologize, and used much of his $284,000 net settlement to expand his consumer rights efforts.
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Mickey_D said:
They did, but they went about it the wrong way. Rather than actually prove the car was sound, they resorted to thuggery and threatened Nader. Post '64 any tendencies the cars had for killing their driver had been worked out anyway with some tweaking of the rear suspension prior to the '65 redesign. How long did it take Porsche to sort the 911 again?
Entai said:
I have. Ever driven one of the cars at speed?
Entai said:
Nader's redesign?
Nader's?
Oh boy. Now you've gone and got me mad
Ralph ****ing Nader had sod all to do with the redesign of the Corvair. The plans had been on the board loooooong before he stuck his nose in. Interesting fact - that film of the Corvair turning over that gets shown every time the Corvair is mentioned, the film that Nader had a hand in publicising?
Made by Ford, who were **** scared of the car.
I wrote a thread about the Corvair (linky ) if you're interested in my take on the car. One day, I shall have one....with the Crown Engineering V8 conversion maybe
Going back to an earlier point - the Porsche 911. Engine in a similar place, similar tail-happy nature. The Corvair was sorted by '64. When did the Porsche 911 lose it's reputation for spinning like a top? Even after the wheelbase change in '68 it still had some interesting habits if you drove like a moron. Think it was '72 by the time they sorted the worst of it's characteristics (8 years of production, GM only needed half that to cure the Corvair). If you don't over-inflate the front tyres on an early Corvair then you do avoid a lot of the supposed handling issues, again providing that you don't drive like a moron.
JRS said:Nader's redesign?
Nader's?
Oh boy. Now you've gone and got me mad
Ralph ****ing Nader had sod all to do with the redesign of the Corvair. The plans had been on the board loooooong before he stuck his nose in. Interesting fact - that film of the Corvair turning over that gets shown every time the Corvair is mentioned, the film that Nader had a hand in publicising?
Made by Ford, who were **** scared of the car.
I wrote a thread about the Corvair (linky ) if you're interested in my take on the car. One day, I shall have one....with the Crown Engineering V8 conversion maybe
Going back to an earlier point - the Porsche 911. Engine in a similar place, similar tail-happy nature. The Corvair was sorted by '64. When did the Porsche 911 lose it's reputation for spinning like a top? Even after the wheelbase change in '68 it still had some interesting habits if you drove like a moron. Think it was '72 by the time they sorted the worst of it's characteristics (8 years of production, GM only needed half that to cure the Corvair). If you don't over-inflate the front tyres on an early Corvair then you do avoid a lot of the supposed handling issues, again providing that you don't drive like a moron.
Ok fair point wrong terminology.
Nader did not himself redesign the Corvair, of course he didn't, however he did make GM see the error of their ways and told the world of the FACT that GM had put very little energy into the safety aspects ofthe Corvair over the first two to three years of production.
Chevrolet had considered adding a front anti-roll bar for the original 1960 Corvair, which would have shifted a significant part of this weight transfer to the front outboard tyre and reduced the rear slip angles considerably in severe cornering, but the extra cost (approx $6 per car is often quoted), and confidence in the recommended tyre pressure differential, adequately compensating for the inclination for oversteer, led GM to delete the anti–roll bar from production models.
That was another of Nader's main points "Why for the sake of $6 do you put peoples lives at risk", he asked the Chairman of GM during the court case.
Nader's book has often been called the downfall of the Corvair, there was only one chapter in the book about the Corvair in particular, and then it was only about the very bad publicity of the fairly odd tyre pressures the car needed to drive smoothly, (11psi lower in the front tyres than the back), and the fact that GM (and in fact all manufacturers at the time), thought more of cost and profit than safety.
However even with the tyre pressures at the correct levels the early cars had a great propensity for rolling over (something that can never be said of any 911!!!).
Yes, GM did sort the rear suspension a bit before Nader's book came out, they fitted stuff that should have been fitted from the start but was deemed too expensive, they also dramatically changed the suspension design AFTER the book came out, maybe they had already planned to maybe they hadn't, I do not know, but it does seems very odd to me that a known problem from the start of production, was only finally sorted, AFTER a book showing that problem to the world at large was published.
Another little known fact to some, but one I am sure you know, was that GM were going to cut production of the Corvair in 1965/6, they had already agreed to do that before the book came out, their answer to the book was to carry on producing the car to stick two fingers up at Nader, and show the public that the car was fine. However sales were already declining and did not improve after the book came out.
1969 was the last year for the Corvair, in that year GM produced only 6,000 Corvairs. The unsubstantiated rumor is that the last Corvair was taken directly from the assembly line to a crusher and destroyed. GM didn't want anyone to have the very last one.
Entai said:
Confidence that came about due to the testing the car had received. The tyre pressures that GM recommended did work.
Entai said:
The Mustang and the American car buying public's desire to not drive anything with any originality was the real killer. Nader just posed with the corpse.
Entai said:
Only if you go ahead and start sawing away at the wheel while at speed. Hell, I've seen a Mk3 Polo roll with driving like that. A Spanish journo rolled a Volvo 850 on his road test of it. No-one wrote books about that.
As for the oversteer - my point stands. It took Porsche 8 years to come up with a half-effective cure (that still left you with a very tail-happy car up until the major reworking for the 993 that added multi-link rear suspension). GM took half that.
Entai said:
It was an exercise in awful timing. The redesign was planned long before the book came (after all, it does take a little while to redesign a car), after it came out they couldn't can it as that would be admitting that the car was unsound (which it wasn't). The Mustang meanwhile was shooting up towards 1 million sales, so Chevrolet built a clone - the Camaro - and set a date suitably far off to kill off the 'vair but long enough to say "our car is safe".
Entai said:
Remember hearing a few years back that a car with the final chassis number was actually still alive, but never saw any proof.
That red Corvair is sexual. What do they go for these days? I must stop reading Christine, it makes me want a piece of 50's or 60's Americana
I remember seeing Didier on the RAC a few years ago, lifting the inside front..... on gravel. Proper committed.
I remember seeing Didier on the RAC a few years ago, lifting the inside front..... on gravel. Proper committed.
