<VV> <Aarrgghh!!> Autoweek ~ "ill-handling Corvair" -, Really ?

[Karl Haakonsen]

Interesting, and refreshing, that the Corvair didn't make that Car and 
Driver dishonorable mention list. At least they did their homework.

I have always thought that a lot of the hullabaloo of the handling of 
the 1960-1963 Corvair was really just that the geometry of the car and 
its suspension meant that the way it lost control when pushed to the 
limits was different than other cars of the time. I don't know about any 
of you on this list who made the transition from rear-wheel drive cars 
to front wheel drive cars, but if you live in the snow belt and lose 
control of a front wheel drive car, it is a very scary experience 
indeed. One can't simply turn into the skid and step on the gas like you 
could with a rear wheel drive car. Once you lost control of the rear of 
a FWD car, there was no getting it back. I once spun completely around 
ending up facing the wrong way in my lane in my 1980 Buick Skylark (my 
first FWD car) and thankfully didn't hit anything or anyone. I wasn't so 
lucky in my 1987 Subaru hatchback, which spun out of control on a frozen 
overpass in Vermont and bounced off both guardrails before stalling 
facing perpendicular to the highway in the shoulder. Once again, thank 
the good Lord, there wasn't another car near me at the time.

Nobody wrote any chapters of any books about the handling 
characteristics and the different ways in which FWD cars handled back in 
the late 70s and 80s. That's because Nader had already made his name, 
and also because no single marque of American car featured FWD.... many 
came out with it at around the same time, and the first one of that era 
that I remember was the Volkswagen Rabbit, a foreign car. You can bet 
that if the GM X car was the only FWD car of its day that our favorite 
ambulance chaser would have probably jumped on this handling feature.

Now, don't get me wrong, I love many things about FWD cars, especially 
with respect to their superior traction in the snow (like our favorite 
rear-engine, RWD cars), but their ability to maintain control of all 
four wheels on icy/snowy roads is seriously lacking. In the current era, 
there is traction control and stability control as well as ABS..... 
technological improvements that have helped to overcome this deficiency 
of FWD cars. I have not lost control in such a dramatic way of any FWD 
cars since the Subaru incident. Not sure if it's due to design 
improvements, more experience and more cautious driving on my part, or 
just dumb luck.

Anyway, my point is that any car with a different drive/engine 
geometry/configuration is likely to handle differently than other cars 
which are deemed to be the norm of the time, especially when pushed to 
their limits. And all cars lose control when they are pushed beyond 
their limits. All the 1960-63 Corvair was guilty of was handling 
differently at the upper limits than other cars. The NHTSA proved that 
those limits were at least as high as its contemporaries.

Anyway, Steven, your email just reminded me of my early experiences with 
FWD.

Karl in Boston
CORSA Eastern Director
Bay State Corvair Club
Stock Corvair Group
Corvanatics

On 1/22/2013 10:56 AM, Steven J. Serenska wrote:
> John:
>>    Part of it is, there are NO ill handling cars nowadays. At all. Probably haven't been in 30 years. And although I think all Corvairs have superb handling when maintained, an EM with soggy rear tires can be a handful, especially at the limit.
> It's funny that you picked "30 years" as your cutoff because I had a
> very scary handling-related experience almost exactly 30 years ago in
> what must have been a 1983 Renault Alliance.
>
> To set the story up, I need to say that in the late 1970s, there was a
> widely published article/video of a handling problem concerning a
> different car, the Dodge Omni/Plymouth Horizon.  Consumer Reports had
> given the Omni/Horizon an unsafe designation because the car failed to
> perform one of their tests.  In a nutshell, the driver would drive the
> car down a straight road, take his hands off the wheel and, with one
> hand or the other, give the wheel a sharp tug. CR wanted the car to
> "auto correct" and resume driving in a straight line with no further
> driver intervention.  I'm not sure if it's a fair or relevant test, but
> what the videos showed was scary.  Not only did the cars not "auto
> correct", they would go into a sideways spin and could seldom be
> wrestled back into control even by CR's test drivers.  Chrysler denied
> the tests, methodology, etc., and I'm really not sure what came of it.
>
> In 1984, after I was out in the work force, I rented a car for an out of
> town assignment and was dealt a Renault Alliance by the Avis clerk.
> While I was initially pleased to get the Alliance because it had been
> Car and Driver's Car of the Year, I remember driving it and thinking to
> myself that a) the acceleration sucked, b) the fit and finish sucked,
> and c) the handling sucked.
>
> I was driving on an interstate in southern NJ and, because I was young
> and stupid, decided to give CR's handling test a try.  I thought I might
> quantify just how much the handling sucked so I gave the wheel a sharp
> tug to the left.  As soon as I did it, it was like the lower front left
> of the car tried to get down and kiss the pavement.  The rear of the car
> flew up and to the right and felt like it was airborne although, since I
> didn't roll, it probably wasn't.  I came down with a jarring thud,
> probably at about a 40-degree angle to the lane.  I jerked the wheel
> back to the right and managed to get the car going forward again.  I
> rode the rest of the way to Philly with my heart pounding and the tops
> of my wrists tingling.  I turned the car in and declined to take one
> every time Avis offered me one thereafter.  As a footnote, Car and
> Driver later published this:
> http://www.caranddriver.com/features/dishonorable-mention-the-10-most-embarrassing-award-winners-in-automotive-history
> .
>
> While the Consumer Reports test is a little dumb, the maneuver at the
> heart of the test is no different than one you might make if something
> fell off the car in front of you or if an animal darted out into the
> road and you turned sharply to avoid it.  The performance of the car in
> response to that simple maneuver scared the living daylights out of me.
> It's hard to believe it was 30 years ago, but even harder to believe
> that a car like that was actually manufactured and sold.
>
> I haven't had an experience like that since then, so maybe your 30-year
> cutoff is correct.
>
> Steven "old and stupid" Serenska
> 65 Monza Convertible, 110/4
> 66 Corsa Coupe, 140/4
>
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