This gallery has a curious mix of people; on some, one can sense the excitement around the unique Corvair. In others, one can feel serious folk, taken with the car’s novel engineering. And in a few, one can notice a sense of whimsy.
So besides Corvairs, this gallery seems to cover a wide range of folks; featuring the common, the chic, and the awfully serious. It’s true the Corvair had a star-crossed career, but the novelty and the excitement of the proposal can be felt in many of these images.
These old photo series are always very interesting. Sadly, they consistently show how fat Americans have become over the past 50+ years, but perhaps more encouragingly also show how many base level cars were sold to their proud owners in the old days of lower incomes and much shorter car loan terms. Like most other survivors, the Corvairs that show up at cars of coffee shows today are invariably mostly high end Monzas and Corsas, and not 500s with pie-pan hubcaps and blackwall tires.
I have a 700 coupe from 1960 which is in a funny position. Its basically an economy car but because of the later ‘sporty’ corvairs, there’s great remanufactured parts support, which I don’t think is true of any other economy car of its age.
This is a fun cross-section of Corvair owners—I do remember when these cars were everywhere.
I’ve often wondered how many buyers chose the novelty it had (that the Falcon didn’t), and how many were being GM/Chevy-loyal…..in other words, what if Ford had marketed a rear-engine car, and Chevy served up the Chevy II? The Popular Mechanics owners’ survey (fall 1961) is interesting:
Of course there were lots of rear engined cars around such as the Beetle and Dauphine, so the front trunk wasn’t a complete novelty. However the Corvair’s was a lot bigger, as that last photo highlights. But when did the term “frunk”, now used for Tesla, Rivian, Lightning etc, come into use? I did a quick search and it seems to have been coined as recently as the launch of the Model S around 2012. Another reference I found from 2009 also defined it as “f***ing drunk”.
Red Convertible:
I’m getting a Florida vibe here. The vegetation and low pitched roofs.
Also, grandpa is wearing flip flop or sandals.
Time to catch the baseball game on the brand new Magnavox color TV.
Also, the cinder block walls of the house in the background. The further south you go in Florida, less lumber and more cinder block construction with plaster on homes.
+1 on the Florida, that was the first thing that came to my mind. And you would want a white top.And at least gramps is not wearing socks with said flip flops!
Kind of reminds me where my grandparents retired to in the 60s and I visited in the 70s. Nalcrest, the retirement community for postal workers an hour away from Orlando. Actually recall very little of the visit other than mainly flat roads for one and getting off the plane in Orlando.We left New York and the terminal was freezing as was the plane flight. When I stepped out into the Florida weather I felt pleasantly warm. Warm for 15 seconds before the true heat and humidity hit me and I wanted to go back onto the plane. My conclusion, you can have Florida.
I’d like to know how the mom in the third picture down planned to get all those kids into that Little Red Corvair…
I also noticed the Maryland Plates on the Teal/Green Corvair in the next to the last picture. Somehow the tags just looked wrong, with their NJ font and odd numbering scheme, as well as white background with black characters. Maryland plates didn’t look like this until the late seventies or early eighties. There was a brief dalliance with that New Jersey font in the mid-aughts due to some sort of prison riot or something like that if memory serves.
But then I realized that these were temporary tags (rarely issued nowadays), so the young man in the picture is probably very proud of his new car!
In the days before seatbelts and oversized baby-seats, kids were piled in without consideration of rated seating capacity. My entire Y basketball team of 7-10 kids travelled to games in our coach’s 1965 Impala sedan.
I remember piling about 10 smaller build teenagers in my ’73 LTD (a 2-door) when I was 16… Of course we were young and dumb and thought of ourselves as invincible, so there’s that. 🤣
Only 10 in the LTD!?! 😉
I once had seven in my Beetle. One guy sat in the space behind the back seat, two in the passenger seat, and three in the back seat plus me driving.
Two families in a VW Beetle–4 grown-ups, 4 kids.
1 kid in the compartment behind the rear seat, under the rear window, 2 adults, 2 kids in back seat, 1 mom, 1 little kid in passenger seat. 1 Driver.
Thankfully, this ritual was for a 10-minute drive.
It was a little better when it was our friends’ turn–in a 1970 Ford LTD.
I took a double-take on that temporary Maryland plate too. Pictures with temp tags are pretty rare, and the survival rates for those paper license plates themselves are virtually nil. So that photo gets my vote for best of this series based on the license plate alone!
Here’s an bigger image of those 1950s/’60s temporary Maryland plates (from http://www.ricksplates.com)
And here’s an image of those 2006-era Maryland plates made with New Jersey blocky dies. I still see these around occasionally, and they always look weird to me:
I popped into Rick’s Plates to check my post while I could still edit it. I’m glad I did, because I thought the Jersey die plates were from earlier in the ’00(s) or even the late nineties!
Thanks Eric! I had hoped you would chime in.
I checked that too, because I couldn’t remember if those odd dies were from New Jersey or Florida.
Only remember being in 1 Corvair, while we lived in Catonsville, MD between 1962 and mid 1965. My best friend Boris’ mother had one (not sure of the year, I was 6 going on 7 when we moved away). They lived at the end of the street and their house backed on 695; back then a 6 foot chain link fence separated their back yard from the interstate though since they put a sound abatement wall in place of the fence. We used to spend hours looking at the cars from his swing set. Just woods in my backyard.
My Dad was to own 2 rear engine cars, the first was a ’59 Beetle he bought used, the other was a ’68 Renault R10 he bought new. He drove a Beetle in Germany while in the US Army in the early 50’s so was familiar with them. He actually stopped buying imports in 1980 owning 2 Dodges, 3 Mercurys, and 2 Chevrolets only after having owned a series of imports. Probably why no Corvair, he was already driving imports even a decade after the Corvair went off the market.
We did move to Virginia about 4 years later, but never lived in Maryland again (my Dad changed jobs and moved quite a bit in his younger years). I found some paperwork from way back then that had been signed by Spiro Agnew 60 years after we lived there.
My friend from work inherited a 1961 NSU Prinz from his father..also rear engine air cooled. Probably similar to comparing an Audi to a Prinz would be comparing a recent BMW to an Isetta.
Another great CC theme, Rich!
Possibly not Mom, but Aunt Marie posing with her Corvair, nieces and nephews?
Love the gent with the cigar in his mouth. Likely moved to “Florader” from perhaps Boston to escape the winter cold back then.
Surely Paul Niedermeyer has a photo of his Corvair Flat-Top?
I remember bouncing through the Iowa countryside with him, through those snowy lanes.
Sadly not. But that thing was unstoppable in the snow, even without snow tires.
Of the 1st generation, I prefer the spartan 500 sedans best. But that’s not what the general public loved best. The Corvair story is such an interesting one.
I thought for a moment that the silver Corvair sedan in the 6th picture was right hand drive – then I noticed the filler cap…
And even the youngest of the kids in picture 3 is now well into their 60s!
My thoughts as well. I guess the baby might just could be hitting the big 60 this year.
I’ll bet several – 3 – of those kids still cringe when they see and then remember how their mom made them all dress identically. Of course, Mom probably made those outfits, so maybe the pride outweighs the cringe factor.
The paint is REALLY shiny on that Corvair!
My favorite is the one of the guy in the suit standing at the beach – and presumably his wife? behind the wheel. That’s one of those shots where I wonder who took it. Somehow I can’t see them bringing a passenger (unless it was a grandchild?) who would have been the camera person. But if they asked some random person to take their picture, then why isn’t he looking at the camera (and looking so grumpy), and why isn’t the lady outside the car as well. Very odd.
I do love the color of that car. And in fact, all of the colors for these Corvairs look great. Much sharper than I recall from the day.
Oh, and I also like the lady getting out of the Lakewood. It’s that kind of accidental picture that I tend to like more than anything else. You can just sense the next second after that picture – “What are you DOING?!” – so very much.
I’ll take a quick, fun guess about the beach shot: They were using a timed shutter release, but couldn’t quite get it to work as expected, and he got impatient and looked away just before the picture was taken.
That seems like the perfect explanation.
“Damn, that thing never wo…”[CLICK}
🙂
Also, I think that picture was taken at the Great Salt Lake. My guess is that it was a View Area off of US-40 (now I-80) at the southern part of the lake, just west of Salt Lake City. I found an area along I-80 where the mountains in the background seem to match, and there’s also a grade-separated railroad line between the road and the lake. The View Area there is now closed.
My understanding is that the word was coined by Tesla owners since their cars have two trunks, one in the front, and one in the back. So to distinguish them, they referred to the one in the front as the frunk. I hate it applied to Corvairs since they have only one trunk which happens to be in the front, so no need to distinguish. On a Corvair, it is THE trunk!
It could be worse… Across the pond, they call the trunk a “boot”.
Somehow “foot” doesn’t work… or maybe “froot” like a certain cereal hawked by a large South American bird with a really big beak.
It’s maybe useful to point out that the ‘trunk’ on an American stage coach was a boot too.
Some shiny, spiffy machines here! Just did a road trip to “wstrn PA”. On way home , Tuesday, spotted a “65-6ish” survivor “Vair”.
White, rolling along “Rt 30” near “Everett PA”.
License plate was soo apropos! (BRN AGN)
The burgundy coupe on the beach, here, is my “fav”!
I had a 64 convertible in1969. All dark blue. Glass packs. Best of the 6 I owned over the early 70s. First one was a 64 500 model in 1967. Fun and cheap to drive
The silver 4 door appears to have chrome side window frames and C pillar (big improvement IMO), but no chrome on the long side crease. Was that a later version?
Photo #5 reminds me of a Warren Miller ski movie from the early ’60s.
The tan Corvair looks great with a ski rack, but the VW in the background is trying mightily to steal the show. In the end, the happy skier balances everything out.
Wait, what? Is that an Austin Healy Bugeye Sprite in front of the Corvair? Great fun!
Fun Cars! Couple from highschool had Corvairs, handled very well, Was a Blast. Guy that owned motorcycle shop had a Really Custom Corvair with a 454 in the back seat. That was in the early 70’s. Good Times!
My brother owned a ‘69 Monza. What a fun car. He would drop me off at high school, purposely so my friends could see it. He kept it for many years but times and people change.
I’m new to these as a “younger guy” with an appreciation for classic cars, but I wasn’t too concerned about trading another car for a ’66 with the components stuffed inside in milk crates, as there seems to be a very loyal, widespread, and helpful fanbase.
Nice pictures ! I still really like the Maroon color on these (and other 1960’s Chevrolets) .
I miss my stripped 1961 base model Coupe (no radio !) I paid .10 CENTS the pound for .
I foolishly didn’t buy a really clean Lakewood wagon in 1972 for $150, dumb .
-Nate
Had 2 of these cuties in HS in San Diego, Ca.,1969. First was a 1-owner 1964 sedan I got for $300 cuz original owner’s daughter didn’t like it. A ’64 convertible with wiiide slalom tires, a rollbar, recambered front wheels and a busted engine was acquired from a mechanic for $50 where I was the lot boy and oil-changer at Kearney Mesa VW. Then I paid a mechanic to swap engines into the cv and gave him the old car in pay. Whatta car to drive to high school! Amazing I survived to tell the tale. Only spun it out once in 2 years…