<VV> Nader and the book ! Why was Corvair his target ?

[RoboMan91324 at aol.com]

Yes, Marc.

I believe Nadar's thought process was that, because the Corvair was 
revolutionary instead of evolutionary, it should have included many safety upgrades 
that would be required years later.  The Corvair was a complete departure 
from the norm and since GM had started with a blank sheet of paper, he felt 
that they didn't need to live with an existing platform and technology.  It 
would have been "easy" in his opinion to include safer technology.  Where his 
logic fell short was that the Corvair was designed and marketed as an 
economy car.  Of course, there are those among us that feel that it should have b
een marketed as a sports car but that wasn't the direction they took back 
when it was first designed.  Adding 3 point seat belts, collapsing steering 
columns, disk brakes, etc. would have guaranteed the failure of the Corvair in 
its first year due to costs.  After that, no manufacturer would dare to 
innovate if it would add cost; especially on an economy car.  High end luxury 
cars could afford to include "experimental" safety upgrades but an economy 
car aimed at the Beetle as its competition could not afford upgrades that were 
not required by the government or a competitive industry.  At that time and 
to a degree, still today, car manufacturers rarely added costly safety 
equipment unless required by the government.  A government requirement levels 
the field because everyone's cost goes up.  Remember, back then, people would 
make an economy car buying decision based on a few dollars difference.

Like it or not, Nadar's legacy is that he forced the government to get more 
involved and ultimately force all manufacturers to include safety equipment 
that they might not have included otherwise.

Doc
1960 Corvette; 1961 Rampside; 1962 Rampside; 1964 Spyder coupe; 1965 
Greenbrier; 1966 Corsa turbo coupe; 1967 Nova SS; 1968 Camaro ragtop
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In a message dated 12/9/2010 11:59:21 AM Pacific Standard Time, 
virtualvairs-request at corvair.org writes:

> Message: 7
> Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2010 11:34:54 -0800 (GMT-08:00)
> From: Marc  Marcoulides <hharpo at earthlink.net>
> Subject: Re: <VV> Nader and the book ! Why was Corvair his target ?
> To: virtualvairs at corvair.org
> Message-ID:
>     <
> 20634314.1291923294352.JavaMail.root at elwamui-lapwing.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
>     
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8
> 
> Long ago Ralph Nader was guest speaker at our national convention, in his 
> remarks he said that the Corvair was an entirely new offering from Detroits 
> biggest company and thus his most logical target