1963 Chevrolet Corvair 95 Rampside Pickup: So Clever It Even Outsmarted Itself

Some vehicles are appealing because they’re sexy, some because they’re craggy and rugged, and some because they look like toys. The rear-engine Corvair 95 trucks fall firmly in the latter category: In bright two-tone colors, they look like Matchbox or Tonka toys magically enlarged to about four-fifths the size of a real truck. With its cool side-loading ramp, the forward-control Corvair 95 Rampside pickup truck was functional and clever as well as cute, offering a bridge between a Volkswagen Type 2 and a full-size domestic truck. However, the Corvair 95 line was ultimately a little too clever — and much too costly — for its own good.

When the Corvair 95 line debuted in the fall of 1960, Chevrolet made no secret of the fact that they were taking aim at small imported trucks, in particular the Volkswagen Type 2. Chevrolet engineer Alex Mair explained that Chevrolet had purchased examples of each compact rival “for intimate engineering investigation.” They even sent engineers to the UK, West Germany, France, Italy, and Switzerland to see European trucks used on their home ground.

You might reasonably ask why they bothered. The U.S. truck market was much smaller back then than it is now — total annual new truck sales (including heavy trucks) were shy of 1 million units in both 1959 and 1960. Foreign trucks had only a small chunk of that: fewer than 37,000 units a year in total for all brands. At that level, they were no great threat to GMC and Dodge, much less Ford or Chevrolet.

However, Chevrolet obviously figured that this might be a growth area. For the most part, Americans in the late ’50s and early ’60s didn’t consider trucks and vans socially acceptable substitutes for cars (something that would change significantly over the next 10–15 years), but there were lots of fleet users and small business owners who might be interested in a smaller van or light pickup that was easier to maneuver and cheaper to operate. Here are what Chevrolet expected to be typical Corvair 95 users:

Automotive service stations, carpenters, construction firms, contractors, dairies, farmers, grocery stores, hardware stores, household appliance dealers, landscaping contractors, newspapers, painters, plumbers, public utilities, ranchers, [and] surveyors.

There was money to be made in those realms. For example, in 1961, the Bell Telephone fleet numbered almost 100,000 vehicles, about 60 percent of them half-ton trucks. That was about $130 million worth of trucks, a sizable market all by itself. Bell was interested in compact trucks, too — they were spending $13.5 million a year just on gasoline, and AT&T’s John MacDougall estimated that each extra mpg would save them about $1 million per year in operating costs. That had led Bell to consider some of the imports, including the Volkswagen Type 2.

In addition to its potential to reach untapped markets, the Corvair 95 was a way for Chevrolet to get more value out of the considerable engineering expense of the Corvair car. The Corvair 95 series didn’t share the unit-body shell of the Corvair sedan — it had its own corrugated steel drop-center platform — but it used the Corvair air-cooled flat six and transaxles with only minor changes. Not only did this help spread out the development and tooling costs of the Corvair powertrain, it also meant the trucks could easily offer both an optional 4-speed manual and Powerglide automatic transmission.

The fully independent Corvair 95 suspension looked very similar to the Corvair passenger car, with conventional double wishbones up front and swing axles with semi-trailing lower control arms in back. However, the greater load requirements meant that the trucks shared few actual components with the Corvair car; front suspension components were borrowed from the full-size Chevrolet station wagon line.

The Corvair 95 trucks also got 14-inch wheels, originally with a new type of bias-ply tire with a lower cord angle specially developed to mitigate a nasty crosswind stability problem.

A Corvair 95 was 179.7 inches overall, a smidgen shorter than a Corvair sedan, on a shorter 95-inch wheelbase. Naturally, the trucks were taller than the low-slung sedan: The pickups stood 70.76 inches high unladen. Chevrolet had decided that that the trucks needed to be low enough to fit in the average U.S. garage (which they concluded had a typical minimum height of 75 inches), although this sacrificed a certain amount of headroom compared to the taller Volkswagen Type 2.

Along with the Corvan panel van and Greenbrier sports wagon, the Corvair 95 line originally included two pickup trucks, the R1244 Loadside and the R1254 Rampside.

Despite its name, the Loadside had only a rear tailgate. It was originally supposed to also include an under-bed storage compartment like the Volkswagen Type 2 pickup, accessible via doors on either side. However, Chevrolet decided the access doors would be too expensive, so they were dropped before production began. The Loadside name confusingly remained.

The Rampside, which cost $54 more than the Loadside, came with a side loading ramp as well as a rear tailgate. The ramp had a load capacity of 1,000 lb, so it was suitable for loading even heavy equipment.

Alex Mair said one of the goals of the Corvair 95 program was to give them “contemporary, functional styling to relieve [the] vehicle of its boxy look.” In that respect, I’d say they succeeded.

These trucks were what people used to call “smart-looking” — utilitarian but chic, like a stylish home appliance.

By comparison, the rival Ford Econoline pickup looked like it had been styled with a putty knife, and always seemed like it was on the verge of tipping forward onto its nose. (There was little danger of that with the Corvair 95, which had more than 60 percent of its unladen weight on the rear wheels.)

Chevrolet noted confidently that the Corvair 95 trucks’ air-cooled six-cylinder Turbo-Air 145 engine, though small by domestic standards (145 cid, 2.4 liters), made twice the horsepower of the 1.2-liter Volkswagen engine.

However, as the above power curves reveal, that still wasn’t very much power by passenger car standards: 80 gross horsepower, 65 hp net. This was a handicap for the rather hefty Greenbrier, which really wasn’t any quicker than the lighter Type 2 Volkswagen bus. The Corvair 95 pickups were significantly lighter than Greenbrier — the Loadside pickup had a curb weight of 2,695, only about 20 lb more than a Corvair station wagon, with the Rampside adding an extra 75–80 lb on top of that — so their performance was closer to adequate, especially with manual transmission. In any case, not many people back then expected trucks to be fast — they were mostly working vehicles, not pleasure cruisers.

Nonetheless, there were some dress-up options. This 1963 Rampside lacks the optional chrome bumpers and wheel covers, but it does have two-tone paint, which was $32.30, plus the Z60 Custom Equipment group, a $24.75 option immediately identifiable by its bright-metal windshield molding. Outside mirrors were not standard on the Corvair 95, even on the driver’s side; this truck’s dual “West Coast” mirrors were an $11.85 option.

Inside, the Custom Equipment option gave you a two-tone dash, doors, and steering wheel, with aluminum inserts on the instrument panel and dispatch box lid, and a foam-padded seat with patterned nylon inserts bolstered in vinyl. You also got a dainty driver’s armrest, dual sun visors, and a cigarette lighter. The radio was a separate option listing for $47.90. The base price of a Corvair 95 truck didn’t include a heater: A direct air heater cost $74.25, the gasoline heater $91.50.

This truck’s swing-out tissue dispenser was a dealer-installed accessory, priced at about $5.35.

Even with custom interior, a Corvair 95 truck was no Cadillac, but in looks, it compared pretty well with the upper-middle end of the Chevrolet passenger car line of a few years earlier.

The 4-speed manual was an extra $91.50, but it was highly desirable on these trucks, in part because it had a synchronized low gear. Still, Volkswagen got a lot of mileage out of the fact that Chevrolet charged extra for a 4-speed and heater, which were standard on the cheaper VW pickup.

In sum, the Corvair 95 was attractively styled and could be reasonably well-trimmed. It was fairly car-like to drive, and it had a number of nifty features. What was not to like? Well, for starters, it wasn’t cheap. A 1963 Rampside pickup started at $2,136. Equipped like this one, it would have originally cost about $2,440, which was quite a lot of money for a compact truck. With every non-conflicting option, a Rampside could top $2,600.

Even for buyers who didn’t choke on the price, the utility of the Corvair 95 had a few awkward snags. First, you’ll notice that it didn’t have a level load floor. In fact, as Volkswagen pointed out in a confidential dealer guide, the Corvair 95 cargo area had four different levels. If you were a gardener or an electrician, this might have been just fine; if you were moving bulky furniture or pianos, it was awkward.

Chevrolet did offer a partial solution: For an extra $48.45, you could order the E82 level pickup box floor option, which gave you three-section removable plywood paneling to cover the area ahead of the engine cover. Chevrolet suggested you could use the space under the flooring for concealed storage, but on the Loadside, it wasn’t particularly easy to get at. The space was more accessible in the Rampside, but as Volkswagen pointed out in its sales training literature, installing the level floor panels rendered the Rampside loading ramp mostly useless! The paneling also left the bed rather shallow.

This issue quickly killed the Corvair 95 Loadside pickup. Without the level floor option, it was difficult to load, but with the level floor, its usable cargo capacity was mediocre, especially for the price.

Here, the Ford Econoline pickup had an obvious advantage. Although it lacked the Volkswagen under-bed storage locker, its front-engine configuration meant that the bed could be both deep and flat, interrupted only by the intrusion of the wheelhouses.

Considered as a whole, the Corvair 95 series wasn’t a total commercial flop: Production of all models totaled 130,362 units over the entire model run. Given the limited size of the compact truck market, that wasn’t bad, and for the first three years, Chevrolet managed to move better than 30,000 units a year. However, the Corvair 95 didn’t sell as well as the cheaper, more practical Econoline, and the Corvair pickup trucks were a commercial misfire. The Loadside sold only 2,844 units and was dropped after just two years. The Rampside managed to sell 18,342 units in four years, but more than half of those were in the first year. Only the Greenbrier survived past 1964, and only for one more year.

The problem all these Corvair 95 trucks faced was that the kind of buyers Chevrolet expected to be most interested were at heart very cheap. Even the Bell System (which did buy the Corvan and Rampside, as well as the Econoline) didn’t have the cash to replace large numbers of its fleet all at once. Most commercial buyers and fleet users bought new vehicles when the old ones were worn out or wrecked, not every year or even every other year. When they did buy, those customers were preoccupied with getting the lowest total cost of ownership, and they weren’t as easily swayed by styling or novelty as passenger car buyers were.

The dorky-looking Econoline pickup truck didn’t make a strong impression either. It was a lot cheaper than a Corvair 95 Rampside — in 1963, you could have a basic Econoline pickup for as little as $1,865 — and sold somewhat better, but it was hardly a runaway hit. The Econoline was far more successful as a van, offering lots of usable volume for little cash.

Chevrolet kept telling its dealers to emphasize quality in selling the Corvair 95 trucks, pointing to features like double-wall construction, which the Econoline lacked. However, Volkswagen calmly reminded its sales force that the assembly and workmanship of the Corvair 95 “would never have passed the scrutiny of Volkswagen’s quality-conscious inspectors.” The VW confidential sales training manual included a photo of the optional Corvair 95 foam-padded seat after “slightly less than 3,000 miles of wear,” noting that “it has sagged noticeably and the springs are showing through the fabric in the back.”

You could sum up these Corvair 95 trucks with a single damning phase: “too clever by half.” In many respects, they remind me a lot of the later GM U-body “Dustbuster” minivans, or some of the GM vehicles Bob Lutz put into production in the ’00s, like the Chevrolet SSR or Pontiac Solstice. They were cool concepts that didn’t seem to be thought out well enough for their intended market, falling short on fundamentals for the sake of novelty.

Today, the Corvair 95 line still has some very loyal fans, which is easy to understand — they look neat and were full of fresh ideas. If I were a building contractor or fleet operator in 1963, I think I would probably have found the use cases of a Rampside too limited and the cost hard to justify. However, as a modern collector toy that can be useful as well as cute, it might be very tempting.

 

Related Reading

Curbside Classic: 1961 Chevrolet Corvair 95 Rampside – It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time (by J P Cavanaugh)

Cohort Pic(k) Of The Day: 1961-63 Corvair 95 Rampside – Likeable Failure (by Rich Baron)

Vintage Brochure: Two Very Different 1961 Chevy Pickups (by Paul N)

Vintage Car Life Comparison: 1961 VW Bus, Corvair Greenbrier, and Ford Econoline – Wherein A 40 HP VW Bus Ties An 80 HP Greenbrier In The 1/4 Mile (by Paul N)

Curbside Classic: 1963 Corvair Greenbrier – We Don’t Want A Better VW Bus (by Paul N)