<VV> Corvair TH350

[kenpepke at juno.com]

The 67 Camaro was pretty much designed and in the able hands of Fisher Body Engineering well before the order to stop further Corvair development.  Both the LM Corvair and the Camaro designs were a product of their time and as such were quite similar in appearance.  No Corvair was ever built with the idea of taking away Mustangs sales because the performance potential was just not there … but … you can sure bet that Mustang sales was the target for the Camaro. 

There must have been powers at GM / Chevrolet that did not want to let the Corvair die.  Somewhere in the later part of 1967 well after halt development order, it fell upon my shoulders as a Fisher Body Engineer, to 'carry-over' all the body tooling from 1969 to 1970.  It came to my realization that the complete car was to be the same as 1969 EXCEPT the engine compartment cover panel, tail panel and rear crossmember assemblies.  I received no part drawings for these parts.  I did see a small hand sketch of a proposed design which had sort of a 'boat-tail' appearance with an extend rear end panel [sort of like what the 71 Buick Riveria would later become … except much wider.]  Some time later I tried to locate actual released or pre-production drawings but none were found.   


Ken P
Wyandotte, MI
65 Monza 110hp 4 speed 2 door
Worry looks around; Sorry looks back, Faith looks up.

***************************

On Apr 5, 2013, at 1:56 PM, "J R Read" <hmlinc at sbcglobal.net> wrote:

> To my way of thinking - no proof of course - the 1967 Camaro IS the 3rd 
> generation Corvair.  The name changed - again no proof - so that the Corvair 
> "stigma" would not hurt sales AND so that GM could continue producing gen2 
> in spite of a well known safety advocate.
> 
> Strictly theory - no specific proof such as internal GM documents.
> 
> Later, JR
> 
> 
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "Joel McGregor" <joel at joelsplace.com>
> To: <virtualvairs at corvair.org>
> Sent: Friday, April 05, 2013 11:53 AM
> Subject: <VV> Corvair TH350
> 
> 
>> Is this true?  From Wiki on the dropped 3rd gen Corvair:
>> "the Turbo Hydramatic 350 transmission, introduced in the 1968 Camaro and 
>> later adopted by most Chevrolet models had been configured for use in the 
>> third generation Corvair."
>> If so I'm sure someone here has a stack of prototypes in their garage they 
>> would like to sell...
>> 
>> Joel McGregor
>