Honda with a boxer?

[Slammer]

they must of had a lot of extra front fenders so they put them on the ST1100

Ooooo! That must have been a fun ride

 

[CDNolddude]

My first car was a '65 Corvair. Yep, an air-cooled boxer.

Did it leak water everywhere like my friend’s corvair? At least my 66 VW bug was dry. Both were a blast to drive.

 

[Larry Fine]

Did it leak water everywhere like my friend’s corvair?

No, but the heat made passengers smell like burning oil and exhaust until I re-sealed the engine.

 

[Gerhard]

Did it leak water everywhere like my friend’s corvair? At least my 66 VW bug was dry. Both were a blast to drive.

I thought the Corvair engine was air cooled.

 

[Larry Fine]

I thought the Corvair engine was air cooled.

It is. I took his comment to mean rain leakage.

 

[CDNolddude]

I thought the Corvair engine was air cooled.

Meant whenever it rained.

 

[MaxPete]

My first car was a '65 Corvair. Yep, an air-cooled boxer.

Hey - MY first car was a '65 Corvair as well!

Pretty good car actually - although mine had a bad ring gear so I had to do "Fred Flintstone"-type starts about 3 times out of 5. It was the 140 hp 4x1bbl carb Corsa model with the 4-speed twirler on the floor.

I could smoke anything with a 6 cyl and most V8s "Dad-mobiles" (big Buicks, Olds, Chevs, Fords etc.) - I won a fair bit of cash doing that. When people asked what it was I used to say, "Oh, its rear-engined, air-cooled.....sort of like a VW Bug - but its faster than your old mans car...."

That was usually enough to hook 'em in for a trip to a back road for a drag.

 

[Larry Fine]

Hey - MY first car was a '65 Corvair as well!

It was the 140 hp 4x1bbl carb Corsa model with the 4-speed twirler on the floor.

What a coincidence! Mine was also a Corsa, four-carb, four-speed, two-door. It was a very dark blue with the silver rear panel. The engine lid had the turbo-charged emblem, so someone had apparently replaced the original engine. The secondary carbs had sheet-metal block-off plates under them, so I rebuilt all four carbs and restored their operation.

 

[dduelin]

My parent's next door neighbors had 4 boys about a year apart. We were all playmates and friends growing up especially the oldest boy Larry that was my age. Their dad was into Corvairs and had a couple or three by my recollection. One was a modded daily driver and the others were in various states of condition. When Larry and I were 12 or 13 they sold their Buick station wagon family car (had those cool windows in the roof) and bought a used VW Campmobile. On the first long trip the engine blew up somewhere in the mountains of GA or NC IIRC. After getting the Campmobile towed back to Florida and without missing a beat Larry's dad did a Corvair engine conversion from a popular kit and built the fastest VW Campmobile in those parts. Larry's dad told us one time about taking a particular curve on a nearby 55 mph road in the daily driver Corvair at 90 mph and how the Corvair stuck to the road in corners.

 

[MaxPete]

My parent's next door neighbors had 4 boys about a year apart. We were all playmates and friends growing up especially the oldest boy Larry that was my age. Their dad was into Corvairs and had a couple or three by my recollection. One was a modded daily driver and the others were in various states of condition. When Larry and I were 12 or 13 they sold their Buick station wagon family car (had those cool windows in the roof) and bought a used VW Campmobile. On the first long trip the engine blew up somewhere in the mountains of GA or NC IIRC. After getting the Campmobile towed back to Florida and without missing a beat Larry's dad did a Corvair engine conversion from a popular kit and built the fastest VW Campmobile in those parts. Larry's dad told us one time about taking a particular curve on a nearby 55 mph road in the daily driver Corvair at 90 mph and how the Corvair stuck to the road in corners.

The "Ralph Nader" Corvairs (Unsafe at Any Speed) were the early - pre-1965 swing axle cars with the single transverse leaf spring in the rear and only two U-joints on each stub axle. That meant that the wheel camber angle of the rear wheels would change on tight corners and sometimes, the spring and shock absorbers would fail and the axle on the outside of the corner (i.e. the left axle on right-hand turns etc.) would "tuck-under" the car and flip it over. This invariably resulted in the injury or death of the occupants.

In 1965, Chevy came out with an entirely new rear suspension for the Corvair - based on the Corvette design. It had double-jointed axles (two U-joints per side) and a lower link that kept the camber angle constant when the wheels deflected up and down. Different from the early Corvettes though, the "Vair had coil springs - so even the ride was better and quieter.

The 1965+ Corvairs were really good handling cars - with just the right amount of slight oversteer to have some fun - but not too much. Even Nader acknowledged that GM had gotten the car sorted out in the post-1964 models.

However, by then it was too late and so even though the cars worked well, the pin-headed, pencil-pushing bean-counters at GM had lost interest and so they killed it.

Dammit.

 

[dduelin]

The "Ralph Nader" Corvairs (Unsafe at Any Speed) were the early - pre-1965 swing axle cars with the single transverse leaf spring in the rear and only two U-joints on each stub axle. That meant that the wheel camber angle of the rear wheels would change on tight corners and sometimes, the spring and shock absorbers would fail and the axle on the outside of the corner (i.e. the left axle on right-hand turns etc.) would "tuck-under" the car and flip it over. This invariably resulted in the injury or death of the occupants.

In 1965, Chevy came out with an entirely new rear suspension for the Corvair - based on the Corvette design. It had double-jointed axles (two U-joints per side) and a lower link that kept the camber angle constant when the wheels deflected up and down. Different from the early Corvettes though, the "Vair had coil springs - so even the ride was better and quieter.

The 1965+ Corvairs were really good handling cars - with just the right amount of slight oversteer to have some fun - but not too much. Even Nader acknowledged that GM had gotten the car sorted out in the post-1964 models.

However, by then it was too late and so even though the cars worked well, the pin-headed, pencil-pushing bean-counters at GM had lost interest and so they killed it.

Dammit.

My friend's dad made the 90 mph comment sometime after 1967 when we moved next door to them so perhaps he was addressing Nader's book which was unknown to me at the time. There were other cars with similar rear suspensions at the time that didn't become notorious to the general public. The Triumph Spitfire and the VW Beetle come to mind as equipped with mono-lever rear axles. I think as soon as the car went into production in 1962 (???) GM knew the car was prone to roll over and so had ridiculously low front tire pressures specified in the owner's manual to promote understeer but who reads and heeds the owner's manual? An owner might but in that day when full service gas stations were still the norm "check the tires, they look low, and clean your windshield, Mame?" might have been a set up for disaster.

 

[W0QNX]

However, by then it was too late and so even though the cars worked well, the pin-headed, pencil-pushing bean-counters at GM had lost interest and so they killed it.

I thought the corvair went away because they had some other wild new model called a Camaro come out in fall of 66.

 

[core-aggie]

I thought the corvair went away because they had some other wild new model called a Camaro come out in fall of 66.

Correct ... to quote from an article:

"The development dollars were then shifted to make the Camaro because they wanted to create a car that could directly compete with the Mustang."

'69 was the final model year.