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Unbelievable, a 12 cylinder Jag engine installed in the front of a Corvair! Wow!
The fact is, my family also bought a '60 Corvair when they first came out, but it had the air-cooled opposing-six that developed all of 80HP. It was a two-door stripper model and didn't even have a heater! But it was a snazzy little car. I still have a Franklin Mint model of it on my shelf "just for the memories."
Our Corvair was a great car for this Class-of-61 Senior in high school, that's for sure. I'll tell Ralph Nader one thing: if that car had been the dangerous roll-over killer he claimed it to be, I must have been an outstanding driver. I used to run that little Corvair at pretty good speeds on curvy roads pretending to be Graham Hill, stiff-arming the steering wheel and all. The car gave no hint of being dangerous, and if it were really treacherous enough to warrant the abuse Nader gave it in his "Dangerous at Any Speed" book, I wouldn't be typing this today.
The only accidents I ever had in our Corvair were when a girl rear-ended me at a stop light on a wet day, and when I missed double-clutching it going into first gear while rolling around a corner, because the car didn't have synchronizers in the first gear. The only damage was a broken shear pin on the stick shift connection.
Incidentally, our very next car after we sold the Corvair was that transaxle Tempest I mentioned earlier. Both of those cars were kind of odd birds at the time. I talked my parents into buying the Corvair with threats that if they didn't, I would use my paper-route money on a second-hand, 500cc, single-cylinder Triumph motorcycle I was eyeing at the time and rode home for them to gasp over.
They probably saved my life, getting me four wheels instead of the two I wanted, even if it was Dangerous at Any Speed.
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