<VV> Ludvigsen article

[Spencer Shepard]

My appologies to anyone who tried to reply to me about my post about the Ludvigsen article. My email mysteriously started giving the wrong return address when someone replied to one of my emails. I was on a chat with an Earthlink rep (thanks Steve K) for 2 and a half hours last night to get that fixed. Someone snail mailed me and asked that I scan and post the article. That may be a tad illegal, but I'm sure Hemmings or Carl won't mind and I'll try to do it.

The jist of the thing is that Karl Ludvigsen is a very well respected Journalist and was in a position to test the first Corvairs in 1959. He must have an Engineering background and is obvliously well schooled in the Mechanics of vehicle handling and chassis dynamics. At that time we wrote an article that criticaized the Corvairs he tested as being very prone to oversteer and at least hinted that were weren't safe for the American public that wasn't very well versed in car contol. His was probably one of the only articles that wasn't complimentary at the time. The Hemmings article talk's about Karl's encounter with Zora Duntov at the '60 Sebring race where Zora aproached him about the negative tone of his article.

The article states that GM realized the situation and had plans or at least the ability to install a front roll bar and rear leaf sping as early as the first models but the bean counters prevailed so that the car could be advertised at $1999. The implication is that finances prevailed over safety, no surprise there! It also states that GM purposely put a very slow steering ratio on the first Corvairs to avoid having drivers over-correct for the oversteer and crash as a result.

It talks about the Nader investigations and how GM dedicated lots of money and facilities to fighting it. Karl was associated with GM at that time and was worried that someone would realize that he had criticized the handling in that '59 article. Somehow that never happened. He says that one of the good things that came from the investigation was the giagantic skid pad that was built and was very helpful in the developement of race cars like the Chaparal and future production cars. He mentions that fact that the handling problems were finally solved was part of the "tradgedy".

Spence Shepard