Symox

This thread sure got derailed

Koyote

Yes, but on the bright side, my cf bike has outlived this thread. So, there's that.

Lombard

Zero shocked.

Symox

ha ha ha ha

znomit

This thread has more life potential than any bike.

Maelochs

I actually read Unsafe at Any Speed as a lark in high school .... not a good book, as Nader obviously was looking hard for ways to pick apart an industry as much for personal publicity as anything else .... maybe he was scared by a car as a kid, or something.

A combination of low tire pressure, swing axles, and overspirited driving led to the largely fictitious bad rap on the Corvair. As you note, @Lombard, other cars (including most Porsches up to the early 60s) had swing axles in back, and no one attacked VW, eh?

Interesting tid-bit: "The curious thing is that by the time Nader’s book came out, Chevrolet had already evolved the Corvair with a second-generation that featured a redesigned rear suspension." (https://www.hagerty.com/media/videos...vair-kill-you/) Apparently while the Corvair did oversteer (rear engine, cheap suspension) it also lacked the power to do itself a lot of harm unless one really tried. (https://www.corvaircorsa.com/handling01.html) (https://www.politico.com/story/2017/...20-1972-240609)

The whole thing was mostly hype ... and the issue wasn't flipping, actually ... it was simply that the rear end would step out, and with slow manual steering, most drivers simply panicked.

As for "the driving skills of Mario Andretti" well, that is crap. I grew up driving on snow, and a rite of passage back then was to have your father take you to a fresh-plowed parking lot and have you initiate skids until to reflexively steered into them.

As time passed, apparently that practice fell out of popularity, because I have seen some really terrible drivers respond (or not respond) terribly to slick conditions. Most people, when they feel the car sliding, seem to lock their arms, squash the brake, and make the skid worse. i can tell you, though, that anyone who could drive in snow or rain back then, with no ABS, big, front-engined cars with soft suspensions on cheap bias-play tires, and often more horsepower than was actually needed, had felt the back end step out. Imagine a station wagon with a V8 up front, no load in back, under hard braking .... You didn't need to be Mario Andretti, you just needed to be more capable as a driver than to throw up your hands and scream when something untoward occurred (and I have witnessed such behavior--total abandonment of control in a situation where Any driver input would help.)

In fact, such things were discussed in Drivers' Ed back then ... a class I am sure has been cut .... though of course no Drivers' Ed teacher ever had a student actually initiate a skid.

Fact is, though .... the Corvair was not "unsafe at any speed" and in fact ... if any of you had actually read the book .... you would know that Nader attacked every aspect of the auto industry. The title meant that All US cars were death-traps.

It is good to see that BF respondents are as concerned with truth when discussing off-topic matters as they are when discussing cycling.

You guys be well ... I am going out for a ride.

Maelochs

Interesting bit: "Truthfully, the Corvair's unsavory reputation has its origins with Ford engineers wanting to protect their own compact car product during the fall of 1959.24 Journalist Patrick Bedard, writing in a December, 1972 article in Car & Driver, cited the work of Federal investigators who concluded that Ford engineers tested the car and unfairly pronounced its handling instability. In 1972, engineers working for the federal government carefully studied the Ford video and other materials and then repeated tests done a decade before. What they found was a distortion on the part of Ford employees that started Nader along the path to his Unsafe at any Speed." (https://automobileandamericanlife.bl...-accident.html)

The first tests proclaiming the Corvair unsafe were done by ... The Competition. Hmmm .... glad they weren't biased.

Also ... "The convergence of forces for change took the industry by total surprise in the months immediately after the 1964 presidential election. The Johnson administration's willingness to sponsor social reform legislation, the appearance on the Washington scene of Ralph Nader, Abraham Ribicoff, and the American Trial Lawyers' Association are all part of the story. Significantly, a 1966 landmark case, Larsen vs. General Motors, marked a new trend in automobile liability decisions.25 Manufacturers were now held responsible for inadequate designs that resulted in injuries due to a collision. Other cases followed Larsen, but it was this case, involving the dangerous design of the Corvair steering column, that made possible an additional recourse for consumers.:" (same source.)

Apparently the Corvair steering column could become a spear in an accident ... true for most American cars of the era, which were not designed for safety, but for style and production efficiency. Recall, this is before seat belts.

"The seminal legislative action that set in motion strict automobile safety regulations was the 1966 National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act.26 Beginning in 1968, this Act mandated that seatbelts, padded visors and dashboards, safety doors and hinges, impact absorbing steering columns, dual braking systems, and standard bumper height be installed in all new autos sold in the U.S." (ibid)

One of the things Nader harped about was dashboards with protruding knobs. back then dashboard were made mostly of vinyl-covered metal with all the controls sticking through from the back ... which provided minimal crumple zones and plenty of puncture potential. No one had ever cared much .... but the "Government must protect us from ourselves!" rallying cry rose up, and .... here we are today, where you are assumed to be too stupid to use a normal QR skewer.

If people had just paid attention to proper tire inflation pressures (15 psi front, 26 psi rear) there would have been no problems.

In fact, today no one would ever win a suit against GM because the owners failed to use the product within warranted limits .... "not our fault if you get hurt misusing our product. You should have read and followed the instructions." What happened though, apparently, is that a mother and child died in a Corvair, and emotion overtook logic (hard to fathom, I know.)

Well .... I wanted to do a little more research just to be sure I was on solid footing .... NOW, finally, I am going out for a ride.

big john

genejockey 

How come the thread didn't asplode?

big john

The book had a chapter on the Corvair. The book itself was critical of the American auto industry as a whole. I saw a piece on tv where some guys (independent, not GM) tried to roll a Corvair. They couldn't induce it to roll until they used a ramp to launch it like the Chitwoods used to do.

I saw part of some congressional investigation where the committee members questioned GM engineers about the Corvair. The people asking the questions knew nothing about cars and their questions were stupid. I remember them asking if GM studied the aerodynamics of the VW before they designed the Corvair.

Nadar came on tv at some point and said he didn't own a car.

Lombard

The question here is what year Corvair did they try to roll? 1960 was the debut year for the Corvair. By 1962, the anti-roll bar was an option on the Corvair. By 1964, the anti-roll bar became standard. Yet all of these were 1st generation Corvairs.

big john

It was first gen but more than that I don't recall.

Lombard

So then they conceivably could have tested a Corvair with the added anti-roll bar. It doesn't sound like a very scientific test.

big john

Who knows? It was almost 60 years ago so there's not much we can do about it.

Lombard

True. I just find it amusing that 60+ years later, there is such an effort to exonerate the Corvair's issues.

big john

Exonerate? Who is doing that?

Lombard

Here, he is basically trying to blame poor driving skills for the Corvair's issues:

https://www.bikeforums.net/road-cycl...l#post22761389

And of course there are those who like to take jabs at Ralph Nader for what they see as "knit picking".

big john

Meh.

Koyote

Good grief. Have any of you actually read Unsafe at Any Speed? One chapter, out of eight, focused on the Corvair. The other seven chapters were about common design features that compromised the safety of many us-built automobiles. The book helped spur the creation of the US Dept of Transportation and the NHTSA. Some of you would be lucky to have had the sort of impact that Ralph Nader had with this one book.

Lombard

Precisely.

Eric F 

Someone needs to change the name of this thread to “Corvair Talk”. 🤣

genejockey 

Not to nitpick, but it's not "knit picking", it's "nitpicking", as in picking nits, which are the eggs of lice. BITD, teachers were periodically required to check students for lice. My MIL was germphobic, so she didn't want to touch them. So she used knitting needles, when my wife renamed "Nitting Needles".

genejockey 

Yes, I think we've reached a new nader I mean, nadir.

Eric F 

Nitting needles for knit picking.

Trsnrtr

Beat me to it.