<VV> A Wednesday night fantastic drive

[Russ Moorhouse]

Stinky, my 65 Corsa, hadn't been run in a couple of months, and I decided to take it out for a spin and also put some fresh gas in it.  I live on an island in the Chesapeake that is 14 miles long and at it's widest point is about 4 miles wide.  There are about 10 to 12 thousand people on the island, most of which only come home to sleep, from the DC/Baltimore area where they work, and most of them are either DINKs or DIWKs, driving overpriced German cars.  There is only one other Corvair on the island and it's a 66 Monza convertible.  Needless to say there isn't a large population of old car people here and those that are, are into the muscle cars and vettes.

Tonight at the gas station, a guy who worked there came out and said "Nice ride!  I used to have a 66, but it wasn't as nice as this", and we talked a bit,  Then driving home there was a white older BMW in front of me and when I put my turn signal on to turn into our community, he made a sudden turn in also.  So now there was this older yuppie BMW in front of us driving very slowly through the community,  When I signaled for our street, he turned in also.  We knew that this car didn't belong in our community and just wondered what this person was up to. When I pulled into my drive, he backed up and got out of his car.  It turned out that he is a mechanic who just bought a business here, but when he first started as a mechanic at a Chevy garage, he worked on Corvairs.  He was all over the car like a fly on honey.  He kept saying, "Boy you just don't see these anymore!  I couldn't believe my eyes when I looked in my rearview mirror and saw what looked like a Corvair!"  We talked for quite some time.  He said anytime I needed any help to bring it up and he'd be glad to work on it and even teach me.  You could tell he was chewing at the bit to work on one again.  I told him about the few little problems I was having and haven't had time to get at it, and he said they would be easy to take care of.

I sure picked a good time to take Stinky for a ride tonight.  My wife also came along for the ride.  This was only the third time she rode in it, since she doesn't like it (she named it Stinky due to the gas vapor smell in the garage).  I think a lot of that may be do to the first ride she had in it and it dropped a valve seat and we limped home,  So she has a sense of it not being reliable and it brings back bad memories of an old Chevy van I rebuilt, which ran fine when I drove it, but gave her all kind of problems when she drove it.  However, tonight seemed to impress her with the attention it was getting.  She was talking away with the mechanic about what we've done to it and how parts are readily available at Clark's.

And just last week I was thinking of selling the Corvair, because I wasn't driving it nor did I have time to work on a few of it's problems.  If you ever get the thought of selling yours, just take it for a ride and watch the people react to it.  It a real ego booster and you'll get that thought out of you mind real quick.

Russ Moorhouse 
'65 Corsa coupe 140 HP
Group Corvair Member
Corsa Member
Kent Island, MD