There have been very, very few vehicles produced in post WWII America that can be accurately described as unique. Not “sort of” unique, but unique in the true sense of the word: that there is absolutely nothing else like it. The Corvair Rampside is one of those vehicles. And not necessarily in a good way. This little truck reminds me of a question that most of us have been asked at one time or another: “Just what, exactly, were you thinking?”
It is well known that the Volkswagen was a significant influence on Chevrolet’s engineering team during the creation of the Corvair (CC Here). Once the Corvair’s design team got its bread and butter sedan out the door for 1960, it shifted its attention to commercial variations. Volkswagen’s Type 2 van and pickup truck had been logical offshoots from its passenger car program. The Type 2 van (and to a lesser extent, the pickup) had been well received in Europe and were beginning to make inroads in the US. Also, Chevrolet’s product planners certainly knew that there was a similar small truck line under development at arch-rival Ford. With so much attention being given to commercial vehicles smaller than Chevrolet’s C-10 pickup and panel delivery, the world’s largest automaker was not about to ignore this market.
Chevrolet’s new little trucks would hit the market as the 1961 Corvair 95 series. First, why 95? The number represented the wheelbase of the trucks, shortened from the 108 inch wheelbase of the of the passenger car. The vehicles were of unit construction, but utilized a rear subframe for additional support of the engine and cargo area. Mechanically, the 95s were mostly standard Corvair, right down to the rear swing axles. However, the front suspensions were largely carried over from the full sized passenger car in 1961-62 (and then from the C-10 in 1963-64). A slightly beefed up version of the Corvair sedan’s 80 horsepower engine was mated to either a Powerglide or the buyer’s choice of a 3 or 4 speed manual.
The Corvair 95 line initially consisted of two vans and two pickups. The commercial van version was the cleverly named Corvan. Chevrolet also introduced the Corvan’s passenger-carrying offshoot, the Greenbrier. As interesting as the two little vans may be (and they will certainly warrant their own CC at some point in the future), our attention today will be devoted to the strange little pickups, which are unusual even by Corvair standards.
Like the vans, the Corvair 95 pickups also came in two flavors - The Loadside and the Rampside. Of the two, the Loadside is the really rare one (fewer than 3000 were built between 1961 and 62) which was basically a standard Corvair pickup. The Rampside is the one remembered for its single unique quality – the hinged panel on the passenger side that lowered to become a ramp into the vehicle’s ultra-low cargo bed.
We all know that the pickup truck has but a single reason to exist: The large open compartment in the back for carrying lots of stuff. So how do you give your customer a usable pickup when your starting point includes a rear engine? VW’s answer was to make a high flat bed with drop down side panels all the way around. Lockable storage compartments filled in the unused area under the flat bed. Chevrolet took the opposite approach. In order to maximize capacity in the bed, the Corvair 95s traded-away the flat floor. The result was a pickup bed with maximum depth in the middle of the vehicle, and a raised portion at the rear of the truck so as to accommodate the engine compartment.
One look at the inside of the bed of one of these and you can see why the Loadside (confusingly named because you could NOT load it from the side) disappeared so quickly. With no access to the bed but through the teeny tailgate, it was singularly lacking in practical appeal. The Rampside was an ingenious workaround of the Loadside’s achilles heel and the problematic shape of the load floor of these pickups. With a bed wall that converted to a ramp, the vehicle got badly needed access to the lowest part of the bed as well as a built-in ramp not found on anything else in the industry. Although the payload was comparable to that of a conventional C-10, the inconveniently shaped bed floor cost the 95s a lot of utility points. That Chevrolet offered a plywood platform to make a flat but shallow bed did not really overcome this weakness.
In hindsight, it is easy to see that this truck had failure stamped on its forehead at birth. What happened here? While I have never really been under the Corvair’s spell, I can understand that the car was a bold swing for the fences as a modern compact sedan. But just whose idea was it to make it into a truck? Was the 95 sort of an afterthought? ”Uh-oh, great car but I just got a memo that we have to make a truck out of the thing too.” Or was it the hubris of a company that was convinced that the American public would lap up whatever it put into Chevrolet’s showrooms? Either way, it was a painful lesson for GM that what may have made sense for VW in immediate postwar Europe was not necessarily relevant to 1960s America.
Of course, the eventual champion in the compact truck market turned out to be Ford. The 1961 Econoline series met the Corvair 95 model for model. With its conventional front engine configuration, the Econoline had the advantage of an unencumbered load floor in both its van and its pickup. The result was that the Econoline’s sales swamped those of the little Chevy. In 1963, for example, Ford sold over 11,000 Econoline pickups to Chevrolet’s 2,046 Rampsides. This was in spite of the Chevrolet’s 2 foot advantage in cargo floor length and a slightly higher payload rating. The Rampside would be discontinued after selling only 851 units in 1964. (Fun fact of the day: Chrysler managed to sell more Imperial convertibles in 1964 than Chevy sold Corvair pickups.) The 1964 El Camino, with over 30,000 sold, removed any doubt about the lack of viability of its air cooled older brother.
The entire Corvair 95 series would be replaced quickly, with the 1964-65 phase-in of a new, more conventional van design based upon the Chevy II. The discontinued Rampside (the sole remaining Corvair pickup) was not missed. Ford, too, would abandon the odd looking Econoline pickup after its initial version. (Chrysler was, of course, late to the party with its 1964 A-100 pickup, another forward control model which failed to survive to a second generation). What is really interesting here is that Detroit completely missed the most obvious (and only really successful) formula for a small pickup truck: Take a conventional big pickup and shrink it. Toyota and Datsun would make a lot of money from this oversight.
It is not often that your correspondent in rusty central Indiana manages to bag and tag a vehicle that has eluded Paul Niedermeyer in the land of the perpetual car, but we have one for your enjoyment today. Since I started contributing to CC, this is the first vehicle that I actually attempted to chase down. I was backing out of my mother in law’s driveway when I spied this Corvair pickup turning the nearest corner. I had to wait for traffic, then dashed after it, but I was too late and it got away. I gave up and started to go home, but as I cut through the parking lot of a big home improvement store, there it was.
I waited several minutes after taking photos, hoping to talk to the owner. He must have had quite a shopping list, because he never came out to add to the sole bag of mulch in the back before I had to leave. So, what can I tell you what I can about this one? First, I believe it to be either a 1961 or ’62. Later models moved the rear license plate off center and eliminated the fragile protruding license plate lights, so it is not one of the ultra-rare ’63-64 models. Mathematically, it is probably a 1961, because this was the only year that Chevrolet really sold any of them (almost 11,000 units, compared to 4,100 in 1962.) Otherwise, the year is anyone’s guess. The truck also carries a really old California AAA bumper sticker and appears to be very original other than a repaint and newer hubcaps.
I am not sure what the legacy of this vehicle is, if indeed it has any at all. Although it must have seemed like a good idea at the time, it may have been the biggest sales flop of GM’s postwar history. In fairness, none of this era’s forward control pickups really set the world on fire, the VW included. In 1963, for example, the Falcon Ranchero would outsell the Econoline and Corvair pickups combined by nearly 40%. But the Corvair 95 pickup was failure taken to a whole new level. Still, it is vehicles like this one that provide some spice in a bland world. A sunny day and a trip to the home center with the Rampside – what a fun and unusual sight, either in Indianapolis or anywhere else. It always was. The Corvair 95 pickups turned out to be two vehicles in one: Perhaps the least useful truck ever and maybe the coolest Corvair of them all. It is indisputably a Curbside Classic.
Something about those tail lights makes me think of the…. I believe it is the “batwing” 1959 Chevy Impala.
Guess I gotta’ propel the lard-laden gingers to Google image search to verify my incoherent memory.
Or the 1970 full-size Pontiacs. Dead ringer. Exactly.
That can of Tab in the cupholder is a nice touch.
The Tab can inside fits this vehicle perfectly.
Why wasn’t the Greenbriar version of this successful, while the VW bus was reasonably successful in its day? Seem to me it has what the VW lacked, more power! Plus CHevy has lots more dealer even in remote areas, which VW does not. I can understand why the pickup version failed, though, one look at that stepped load floor and any potential buyer would shrink away. My grand parents used to have a Japanese version of this in the 1970s: a Mazda Bongo van, complete with engines in the rear!
My take would be that the big money in those early 60s vans was in the cargo version, and the Corvairs with the rear engine could not match the utility of the Econoline. Nobody sold many of the passenger versions back then. I think that VW did only because there was a certain number of people who really loved VWs but who needed more room. Also, they were economical and of very high quality. None of the early American passenger vans had that VW “quality feel”, and with 6 cylinder power, they were not as economical. If you got into a domestic showroom, it was hard to pass up a comfortable Impala wagon for a funny looking, noisy, slow and rough-riding Greenbriar.
“Why wasn’t the Greenbriar version of this successful, while the VW bus was reasonably successful in its day?”
Several reasons. First, VW was a cult-car company; it was anti-establishment before anti-establishment was mainstream. For someone who wanted a Beetle but couldn’t deal with the lack of room…this was the choice.
Not so, buyers who wandered into Chevy dealerships. They tended to the conventional; they were attracted to Chevrolet’s interpretation of what a modern car should be. A station wagon, that’s the ticket. If they wanted an offbeat, rear-engine box, by God they’d have gone to that Volks-Wagon place!
Second…imported TRUCKS were slapped with a heavy tariff about this time. The VW van got around that as it was classified as a passenger car; but with the tariff, VW transporters and pickups became damned rare. For less money charged the customer, he could buy a van, take out the seats, and have just about the same utility. So, VW got the families AND the handymen with the Bus.
I always liked this setup, partly because I like eccentric rigs and I gravitate towards trucks. The depressed center area seems, not so much a handicap as a mixed blessing – small stuff, bags and cans and whatnot, can be set there without fear they’d slide to the rear and over the gate. The steps would prevent it before the driver was alerted with the noise.
Ah, coulda-woulda-shoulda. Such a departure from the norm, coming from Chevrolet…it could only be doomed, right from the start. Even had it sold well, no doubt – like the Corvair – it had many enemies in the halls of GM.
Had Chevy thought a bit more, they would’ve stuffed the engine up front under the driver and passenger giving more space to the rear cargo area(of course the axle hump would protrude up a bit), and make it a front wheel drive(not sure front wheel drive was possible at that time though), as well, the same for the vans.
I saw lots of Corvairs growing up back in the day, but not many of these pickups and vans – they simply were not useful enough to justify their existence, apparently the Jeep Commando C-101 fits in there, too, although I liked those and owned one for a brief time.
I saw an odd VW pickup on occasion as well, but in all cases, except for the VW van, these vehicles were pretty rare.
In looking at the pickup bed again, that odd step – why didn’t Chevy just make a bi-level bed? That “step” serves no purpose and reduced the little utility the bed already had – they should have just raised the step to the upper level, that would have been better.
I used a Rampside for 5 years as my work vehicle, clocking 30-40K each year. That odd “step” is the cat’s ass for a pickup. 95% of the time the items you’re carrying fit easily into the 4×4 space made up of the low part of the bed. (It is btw designed to perfectly fit two standard pallets, one at the Ramp and one at the Tailgate).
Sitting low in the well means things don’t slide around as much, light items are less likely to fly out, and heavy items only increase the stability of the truck because it’s carried so low. And you have to realize that extra deep well in the middle (over 31″ deep) and a bed that’s 105″ long gives it an overall volume to the rails that is higher than anything on the road today, short of a dump truck.
Further, being able to walk into the middle of the bed means there is none of the awkward clambering in and doing the hands and knees crawl to get things at the front of the bed like on a conventional pickup.
My in-laws gave me their ’98 Frontier (w/ only 91K kms on it) with a modern 4 cylinder and 5 spd. While free is nice, it can’t hold a candle to the 2.7L/4spd combo in my Rampside. The Rampside can easily carry 4 times the load. It’s independant rear suspension means it rides alot nicer. And having the motor 8 feet behind me means the only thing I listened to was a little wind noise and the radio.
I don’t know if anyone flagged it, but the Rampy in the pictures is a ’63. Orange turnsignal lenses = 63>, Corvair 95 emblem with “Chevrolet” = 63/64, Centre location of Rear Lic Plate = <63. Hard to tell from the pics, but I think that Rampy also has the 61 to Early 63 "Mystery Shifter".
I understand that Bell Telephone (at least in NYC) bought a big initial order of Rampsides, because they could roll big spools of cable in and out of the bed so easily.
i’m sure you’re right, paul but i don’t remember them as a kid in jersey. the standard bell telephone van in the ‘burbs was the econoline van with the weird vents next to the headlights.
I have seen a few of those rampsides and almost every one has been modified with a larger engine. Last Sunday at a fine car show I ran across one that had a GM 502 crate engine installed. It was nicely put together and I was able to talk to the owner a bit. I asked him how it was to drive on the highway and all he could say was that it was a real handful. The adoring fans that had gathered asked that he start it up. There is much to love about a GM big block with an aggressive camshaft profile and unrestricted exhaust. Educatordan would have been proud.
VW actually made a ramp side version of the Type 2 with the deck over the storage lockers replaced by a removable panel. The target market was businesses moving tall heavy things like refrigerators, switchgear and electronics cabinets. I’m guessing this was not a big seller since it was only available on the split window bus and was not continued on later models.
I like the customized console/cup holder with the shifter sticking through one “holder”
Oh man, jp c.,you too have become a Car Stalker! Nice find and nice article!
Great shots of a real oddball classic, bravo!
Very nice never seen one before thats been a great insight its obviously a lousy ute but the ramp is a cool way around the drawbacks. This particular ute seems to have led a gentle life the bed is mint. I like the forward control layout the big D 3 dont build it anymore leaving modern versions to the Japanese makers Great post
The Loadside lost its unique feature, and the root of its name, before production. I believe that it was intended to have a flat shallow bed with a large lockable compartment underneath that was accessed through swing-down door(s?) on the side behind the cab.
How do they go for structural rigidity?
As I’ve stated before, my grandfather worked for GM and had 4 daughters. Did he buy a Chevy van of some kind to haul the family around in? Nope he bought an Econoline with the ole I6. Must have been hard to sell those Corvans even to hard core GM fans. Strange question, which had more horsepower, VW van or the Corvan?
The ’61 Corvan had 80, although this figure may have been bumped a bit in the later models. I’m no VW expert, but a quick Wiki search seems to indicate that the early 60s VW Type 2 put out about 50 bhp. This seems about right, with the Corvan’s extra 2 cylinders.
You got me curious, and I also learned that the ’61 Econoline had 101 bhp.
I think that your grandfather had a lot of company. Pretty bad when GM couldn’t even get their employees to buy them. I did not research Corvan sales, but they must have been pretty bad to replace the platform by 1964.
Vw van were hopelessly underpowered and to drive one at the speed limit on anything other than flat ground meant thrashing the motor mercilessly, which kills them quick, despite the mods made to kombl motors they dont last long untill the suitcase motor came out buying a VW was a sentence to the crawler lane. The flat engine had adequare power and was cooled better VW made some awful motors the twinport 1600 touted as a good motor is absolute crap this was the pinacle of VW upright engineering and the worst engine they made cylinder heads crack between the ports and there is a casting flaw behind the flywheel that causes oil gallerys to crack with no known cure I know Americans think Vdubs are the epitomy of reliability but elsewhere they are the worst car/van you can get with brittle engines and poor build quality.
Had a 62 Ford van and the headlight vent lined up with your right leg. Great cooling effect with shorts on!
Great article, J.P. And what a great find! I found one of these Rampsides in the grave yard behind a local garage–the owner told he intended to restore it and use it for tailgating at LSU games. I hope he did, but I doubt it.
As far GM and Ford missing the boat on small pickups, I doubt it. The contemporary Falcon-based Ranchero was a perfectly good little truck, but GM never copied it and Ford walked away from it after 1965. The problem is that the cost of building a small truck does not shrink as fast as its capacity and the price you can charge for it does.
That’s what’s killing the current Ranger. You can buy a base F-150, with far more capacity, for little more than a Ranger–and which one is more profitable for Ford, do you guess? I hate to say it–I’m a Ranger owner–but it’s true.
you like to trade for NICE 1996 F-350 4×4 4 door diesel Aloha Ted
It wasn’t a design flaw that killed the production, Ford fared better because they were $100 cheaper. Ford didnt have the traction, braking, or payload that the 95 had. Yes you are correct, Chevy was competing against itself with the Corvair and Chevy II in some ways. But if you check the advertizing GM was doing something different with Corvair “Come see the New Chevrolets and Corvairs” You think they had a Branding Vision? I’m kind of tired of hearing from the uninformed that Corvairs werew a failure. Lets see..lightweight unibody construction, 4 wheel independant suspension, low and wide, with a small(2.5 to 2.7 L) displacement aluminum engine……too bad that formula hasn’t suceeded into todays world……isn’t it?
Thanks for reading, John. But I cannot agree with you. The Corvair 95 pickups were an unmitigated market failure, and not because of a $100 price disadvantage. This was in an era when GM controlled half of the market, and virtually any Chevy would oursell virtually any Ford just because of inertia and the most incredible dealer network ever created. For a Chevrolet to tank so badly (particularly one without significant quality faults like, say, the Vega a decade later) against a competing Ford simply had to reflect the truck’s concept. True, the payload may have been higher and its road manners better, but that unique multi-stepped bed floor just turned off most of the buyers in this segment, which was a small segment to begin with.
Well guys for what it is worth I have owned both the Rampside and the VW Truck. I bought my 95 Series from the local Independant VW Mechanic in the late 70′s and contrary to what I have seen here is mine was a 1965 and accoeding to the man I bought it from there where only 1500 built that year. So must have been one of the last ones made. On the Identity plate down on the kickpanel on the drivers side it read for Horsepower 100 BHP. later on I went to work for GM Service and spent 22 years taking care of GM owners and thier rides. I also spent a tour of Duty with a Volkswagen Restoration shop in Northern Alabama for awhile and saw just about everything Volkswagen made. In 63 and up to around 68 The Volkswagen engine was a 50 hp engine in just about everything but VW on the vans and the trucks added a gear reduction block on the end of the axles to give the little engine the help it needed to push the Bus along. VW then went to 65hp and finally in the 70′s went so far as to put the small Porsche engine in the buses and even tried a watercooled one before they were done. The only things I didn’t like about the 95 series Chevy was it was cold in the winter like most air cooled vehicles and mine had six individual carbs on it that where nearly impossible to keep balanced so it never ran very smooth. Between Ralph Nader and Fan Belt problems the Corvair was doomed from the beginning. One of the Dealerships in Alabama I worked for has a couple of different years of corvair cars in the basement that were never sold and neither one of them have over a 100 miles on the odometer. Don’t get excited boys they are still ther and no they will not sell them. theres a 1928 Chevrolet truck chassis sittimg next ot them that they never received the body too as well. Keep up the good articles I Love em bring back lots of Memories mostly good ones too.
I still own a 1963 Rampside.
When I was much younger I had a 63 Convertible. What killed it for me was the Heater. Living in the Midwest Brrrrr. But that was my fault, young and did not understand the concept.
Fan belt, I never have thrown one,
Carbs, I don’t have any problem with keeping them tuned and with the new gaskets and seals today, wonderful.
As far as the article goes, I loved it! Great job!
And of course I agree with this statement “coolest Corvair of them all. It is indisputably a Curbside Classic”
By the way,,,,My 63 has a gas heater in it. Wonderful, to say the least.
I just bought a 1962 Rampside with 110hp and I love it already! Keep in mind it’s not running yet, and I’ve never really driven one. This article makes a few points that might have helped sales of the Corvair pickup. That if GM had designed the Loadside as a normal flatbed, with locker room for storage underneath the bed (As VW did) it might have been a big hit? Since the usefulness of a pit in the middle of the Loadside truck makes no sense really, when you can’t easily remove debris as in a normal flatbed truck. But with the Rampside, the ramp opens giving access to the bed/pit. Also loading the Corvair Pickup into the bed/pit will center the weight between the four tires, that’s how they are capable of hauling 1,900 lbs. Almost a ton! It’s pretty fun to walk in the bed of a Corvair pickup, many levels to step on. There’s lots of potential for this truck. I bought it to utilize the ramp to the fullest! There’s just nothing else like it. I have some heavy stuff to put into my F150 truck, it’s just not safe to load/unload it! But with this rampside, I can roll it into the middle of the bed from the ground level! I heard from some people who made use of the ramp, that they loved it. I’ve seen some rampsides converted to flatbed too. But I have an idea to make panels that fold to form a flatbed, I will have to toy with that idea? Just as I can use the pit, I will also want the bed to become flat! So I want it both ways. I want to sleep in the back of it too, so I’ll have to come up with the solution. Thanks for the article. I don’t agree that the truck was a bad idea, just not marketed correctly. Comparing the Corvair Pickup to a Ford Forward Control, the weight distribution is much different. The Ford would be better than the Corvair to haul a trailer, as the Corvair engine weight is in the rear. But I’ve seen video of the Ford FC Econoline truck flipping it’s rear in the air at a hard stop, due to the light rear end on the Ford FC.
Also the early model corvairs lacked horsepower that later models gained. If the Corvair had more time to evolve as the VW and Porsche did, perhaps it would have had a better reputation? Check out what Jay Leno did to a 1961 Rampside!
http://www.jaylenosgarage.com/trucks/1961-chevrolet-corvair-95-rampside/index.shtml#item=72531
Econoline vs Rampside video…. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrhCAiV7diY
Here’s my ‘new’ 1962 Rampside!
Corvairscott@aol.com SanDiego Corvairclub on FB
Scott,
I did a collapsible level bed.
And here it is installed.
No matter how compact it is when removed, it’s still freaking heavy, so not something you’ll want to take in, pull out every day.
I am looking for a 60″s Ford Econoline pick-up or Corvair pick-up. Does anyone know where to find them??
ANY LUCK FINDING THE TRUCK YET??
Nothing yet, still waiting, maybe after the holidays.
I owned a 62 Greenbrier for over a year now, It has a later 110hp engine in it. The biggest surprise I got was how well it handles and how well it rides. It’s a blast to drive and has good power. I don’t have any problems with belts or carburetors. Unlike the Econoline and the VW’s I’ve owned and driven, The Greenbrier is a true minivan, that dodge claims to have invented 20 years later.
The maybe you’ll enjoy this: http://www.curbsideclassic.com/curbside-classics-american/curbside-classic-1963-corvair-greenbrier-gms-greatest-hit-6-we-dont-want-a-better-vw-bus/
The first 3 cars I owned were Corvairs, and I loved em. As the article points out, the vans and truck were wonderful but quirky vehicles, too different to appeal to mainstream pickup purchasers. Radical engineering and superb fuel economy was not enough to gain market share.
I suspect the later small size pickups from Japan benefited a lot from militant OPEC. Gas prices doubled in months instead of decades, and you often waited in line for hours, often rationed due to limited supply. Pretty much ensures fuel economy moves to the top of the must-have list.
I bought a 1961 Rampside with a two-speed Powerglide I think around 1969 when I was 14 to drive around my parents’ plot of land, what we used to call a “lot car”. My next-door neighbor was selling it, it had flat tires and he thought it did not run, I probably paid less the $100 for it.
I blew up the tires and charged the battery and used some starting fluid in the carbs and it started. My neighbor was surprised it was running and told me it needed a valve adjustment so he proceeded to lay underneath and adjust the valves while the engine was running. The engine ran progressively worse until it finally stalled and I never got it running again after that. I had a Chilton manual with a Corvair section that described how to adjust the valves. I think the procedure was to bring each piston to TDC and use a feeler gauge to set the clearance. I attempted it once or twice but didn’t have the skills or determination to get it done. A junk yard eventually towed it away.
I was amazed by the fuel pump since it had one inlet line and three outlet lines, one for each carb and one going straight up to the cab to supply the gas heater. The gas heater seems dangerous thinking about it now, especially with the forward mounted cab. A head on collision seems like it could have started a cab fire. I also wonder if the fumes when operating the heater were vented outside the cab somehow.