What was it about the Chevrolet Corvair that was so unsafe that led Ralph Nader to despise it?

Answer 1

Let us be honest, as usual: The Corvair is fundamentally a profound oversteer. With 62-percent of its weight on the back wheels it could only be otherwise if very ingenious suspension techniques had been called into play. This was not the case. As cornering forces on the Corvair chassis increase there is an initial very mild understeer tendency, probably attributable to the rear suspension geometry, but then, well within the average driver's range of slip angles, oversteer sets in in a gradual way that is easily countered by the excellent steering-whose very lightness, of course, is in part a function of the oversteer. Having heard that Uncle Tom himself had declared that he "tried but just couldn't lose the Corvair", I asked Chevy's affable engine development engineer Bob Clift to keep a path clear to the basement while we tried some very fast turns. By making extremely deep corrections it was possible to hold the car on a line but, as in any automobile ever built, there was a point beyond which it wasn't prudent to proceed. For a moderately skilled driver the Corvair is a genuine ball to drive, it being possible to hustle hard into tight corners and bring the tail around with just a twitch of the wheel, counter-steering until the slide stops and the time for acceleration arrives. This is not, of course, everybody's way of driving.
Chevy spokesmen have said that they didn't feel a front anti-roll bar was needed because the car's center of gravity was so low that it doesn't roll much. This is true enough, from that standpoint, but such bars are also powerful tools for adjusting handling, and one of the first things that should be done to this car is to replace that anti-roll bar. Since this would only actually counterbalance the difficulties that exist at the rear, however, thorough redesign should commence at that end. With the conventional design methods used, the high spring rates needed to support the rear end weight have resulted in unduly high roll stiffness at the rear, a sure harbinger of oversteer. A solution like that on the Mercedes-Benz 300SL Roadster is called for, having a single central coil or a pivoted transverse leaf spring to support loads without affecting roll. For all its novelty the Corvair is surprisingly naïve in this major respect.

Answer 2

Corvair was targeted by Nader because he was targeting GM directly and his book starts off with a brake problem on the 54 or so Buicks that cause a few people to get killed due to a defect in the power brake unit. The problem the corvair had is that it had the exact same suspension that the Volkswagen Bug had up until 67. If the rear tire blew out it could cause you to weave and then if the tire got far enough under the rear of the car it would cause the axle to rise up and the car flip over on the side. This killed a fair number of folks before Corvair revised the design to use 2 joints on each axle like Volkswagen did 'later" in 67. Volkswagen had the same basic problem which has garnered little attention because Nader's book became so famous. Nader however purposely did "not" target the Volkswagen Bug because he used to do work for Volkswagen and had friends there that he didn't want to step on. While his book had very valid points as the American car industry was not at all interested in safety at the time, only in selling cars. it was also a snow job as he was writing the book to get them back for being snubbed by the big 3 for years. Same reason I suspect that he ran in 2000 for president knowing full well that if Bush won the environment would suffer. If you read his book, which is very good read even so, it tell a a lot about the car business at the time. However does not tell the whole story. Ford in 56 attempted to make safety the number one issue. They made padded dashes, deep dish steering wheels, added seat belts, and such stuff and made their main ad campaign that year the fact that their vehicles were "safe". That bombed for them and cost them a ton of money as nobody wanted a "safe" car, they wanted a "fast" car. That was the same period when Chevy had just come out with their famous small block V-8 that was tearing up the tracks and everybody wanted the fastest, newest and most stylist (read ourlandish) vehicles. Ford learned hard from the campaign of safety and GM and Chrysler saw Ford's problem and avoided it themselves. That aside though they scrimped on parts like they have always done, particularly since the end of WWII because they had little trouble selling all the cars they could make. That gave them no "reason" to make changes. It was only when the Japanese had wrecked their profits that they eventually decided that Safety sells. We now have all the safety features thanks in part to Ralph Nader bringing this to the attention of the public and Volvo deciding not to patent the 3 point seat belt and let everybody use it for free. What Nader doesn't tell you is that GM developed air bags in 66 and continued to develop the technology until they were eventually made cheap enough and reliable enough to add to cars years later. Costs was what drove the car companies, but so was American jobs. Nobody wants to close plants and lay off workers if they can help it and that is what made the car makers very conservative in changes in the way they did things. The Japanese and Germans and Swedes (Volvo) and such coming here and doing things differently finally gave them some concrete ground to step out on and make changes. Lots more to this simple issue that the fact that the Corvair caused some deaths. Don't forget that Ford Explorers had a very similar problem just a couple of years ago. Rear tires causing the vehicle to flip. Corvair was also a very good car otherwise and compared to a lot of other cars was well constructed. Naturally the interior and body is unsafe compared to modern cars and can't be compared to such, but compared to cars of the time it was a cheap to buy and dependable ride. Did have the problem with the suspension on the early models though. Heck until 67 all the cars including Lincolns and Caddys had single brake systems with drum brakes and if that ain't unsafe I don't know what it!!!!! Nothing like mashing the brake pedal driving a 6000 lb car and having the pedal go to the floor and nothing else happen. Been there done that more than once and don't want to go back to those days for nothing. :-)

Answer 3

Unsafe - Thanks To Cost-Cutting
The fact is, no matter how much we try to deny it, there was a definite problem with the 1960-1963 Corvair. And that problem, a weakness in the rear suspension, was not a problem of design - as the original designs for the Corvair in fact took this into account. The problem was clearly that marketing and cost-cutting won out over intelligent engineering. The designers that planned the Corvair knew that anti-sway bars would be needed to support the added weight of the rear-mounted engine. But to save a measly $4 per car, those bars were not included in the final product, and the inevitable disaster struck.

Answer 4

While it's true that Corvair needed sway bars to help reduce body roll, the main problem was the people were unfamiliar with the handling traits of a rear-engine, rear-drive car. Except for the old VW Beetle and the Porsche, all cars were (and mostly are) front-engine, rear-drive. Which makes for a more balanced vehicle and set up more for understeer ( if trying to make a turn with too much speed, the car will slide straight ahead)

A rear-engine car tends to oversteer, which is much more sensitive and especially in emergency avoidance or high-speed driving, can cause the car to spin out. As a nation of front-engine, rear-drive cars, people weren't used to this type of handling and many people were hurt or killed because of it. The VW Beetle never had an issue because it wasn't as heavy or as powerful as Corvair.

Combine a poorly executed design (sway bars would have helped big time but GM was too cheap) with the poor drivers education we have in the US. A receipe for disaster.

And not unlike the SUV, especially the Ford Explorer/ Firestone debate. Were the Firestones defective? Maybe. Do people tend to neglect their tires, especially inflation? Yep. Does a 4000 lb, top-heavy vehicle handle like a sedan? No. If that under-inflated tire fails on that 4000 lb. top-heavy vehicle at speed, can most drivers handle it. NO! I'm not sticking up for Ford either, but we need better drivers ed in this country.

Answer 5

If I remember correctly it had to do with the suspension. The car had been reproted to flip over easily. Although my experience with it did not show this, I had friends that owned them for years and had no control or flip problems and one got rid of their car within days of the release of Nader's book , Unsafe at any speed.

Answer 6

i hope you don't go blind reading all that "stuff". simply put, Nader jumped on the "accordion" effect. in almost any collision the passengers were pinned in due to the doors jamming. the Ford Pinto was the one that caught on fire in collisions.

Answer 7

All too often, it burst into flames after even a moderate collision, and was difficult to get out of once that happened. It literally became your coffin at such times...

Answer 8

Nader can't drive a car that actually handles...like my dear departed Aunt Petunia said,"Sonny,if you can't drive it,park it".

Answer 9

It was the gas tank in the back , and the engine
was there too and if you were in accident
it would start a fire and they were worry
the car would blow up .