<VV> Spyder/Corsa turbo -- fast?

[Russ Moorhouse]

I haven't been following this thread closely, so I don't know whether it pertained to being fast when it was new, or if it can be made fast by today's standards.  It did get me to thinking, about how fast was it back in it's day.  Back then a 0 to 60 time was very good for a production sports car.  Even in the early 80's the auto magazines was touting a BMW 318(I believe)as a standard to compare other small cars by and it only had a 0 to 60 time of 10 seconds. Regarding the Corvair Spyder/Corsa being fast in it's time period, and considering it was mass produced economy car, it was fast for that market.  It couldn't compete against the V8s, they were stuffing in Falcon and Chrysler products on a drag strip, but the Corvairs after 1965 could sure out handle them on a road full of twists and turns.

Below is a clip from an email I sent to my son, a VW/Porsche fan. The Porsche in the '60s were limited production cars, maybe 7,000 a year were built, and they cost a lot more than a Corvair.  Here again the car magazine held them as pinnacle that other sports cars, in it's class were to be compared to, and here was the was Spyder and especially the Corsa, with it's new suspension, barking at the heels of the Porsche and half the price in some cases.  So yes the Spyder and Corsa were fast for that time period, even in a class that was a step beyond what it was intended for.
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I ran across this site while wanting to compare Corvair acceleration (0-60 mph) performance against Porsche. The early 1960 and 1961 Corvairs, couldn't compete with what the low cost Porsche's could do.  But in 1962 the Corvair Spyder came out and it blew the Porsche's out of the water, even the non-supercharged engines were now able to keep pace with the Porsche's.  I compared the 1961 Porsche 1600, the 1964 356C, the 1965 912 Porsche and the 1966 Porsche 911, which was out of the price range of a Corvair.  All the Porsche's ran about $2,000.00 more than a Corvair, but the 911 was more than double the price of a Corvair. A '65 Corvair Corsa Sprint, a lightly modified,non supercharged engine which out performed the supercharged engine, would do 0-60 in 9.9 seconds with a 3.55 axle.  If it had the 3.89 axle, it would be even quicker.  Even though the 911 was twice the price of the Corsa Sprint, it's 0-60 time was only .9 tenths quicker.  Not bad for a cheap American economy car that sold for less than $3K.  

1961 Porsche 1600  14.4 Seconds    Over $3K
1964 Porsche 356C  13.5 Seconds    $4574.00
1965 Porsche 912   11.5-12 Seconds $4961.00
1966 Porsche 911    9.0 Seconds    $6500.00

1960 Corvair bottom of the line          19.5 Seconds  $2K
1962 Corvair Monza Spyder (supercharged)  10.5 Seconds  $2569.00
1964 Corvair Monza (convertible)           14 seconds  $2481.00
1965 Corvair Corsa (supercharged)        10.2 Seconds  $2465,00
1965 Corvair Corsa Sprint                 9.9 Seconds  $2983.00

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