A 1968 Chevrolet Corvair 500 Sport Coupe with two-speed automatic transmission, the second-to-last model year for the controversial Chevy, found in Denver.
Quick, what's the most controversial American car ever built? Was it the Edsel? The Pontiac Fiero? The Chrysler Airflow? That wasn't a serious question, because all of us know the answer already: the Chevrolet Corvair. Today's Junkyard Gem was built during the last gasps of Corvair production and now resides in a self-service car graveyard in Denver, Colorado.
More than 2 million Corvairs were built for the 1960 through 1969 model years, and plenty of them still sit in driveways, garages and yards awaiting repairs that never come. That means it's not too difficult to find examples of GM's radical rear-engined compact in junkyards to this day. The short version goes like this: Increasing numbers of American car shoppers were choosing small imported cars during the second half of the 1950s, with Volkswagen Beetles and Renault Dauphines moving out of showrooms in sufficient quantities to make Detroit at least slightly nervous. The American Motors Corporation cashed in on the trend by building compact Ramblers, which sold very well. Chrysler, Ford and GM each began developing compact cars that would debut as 1960 models.
With bench seats and a flat floor, six occupants would fit inside . There are some obvious drawbacks to the air-cooled/rear-engine design, of course; it's difficult to heat an air-cooled car in cold weather, for one thing. What proved to be more significant for Corvair sales was the different handling you get with a rear-heavy car equipped with a swingaxle suspension versus the"traditional" front-engined cars most Americans had been driving since the days of the Ford Model T.
The harshest competition for the Corvair came from within the Chevrolet Division itself, in the form of the Chevy II/Nova. Introduced as a 1962 model, that car looked and drove like a smaller version of the huge-selling big Chevys, while being just slightly bigger than its air-cooled showroom neighbor. Starting with the 1963 model year, Chevy II sales beat Corvair sales and never looked back.
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