Killer Cars-No they weren't

[MineralMan]

8. In 1969 or early 1970, I bought a 1960 red Corvair two-door.

It had 60,000 miles on it. Thanks to Ralph Nader's muckraking book, I was able to buy it from its original owner for just $100.

I drove it for about six months while attending college. It drove well, looked pretty cool, I thought, and served me well, until I found a 1959 Austin Healey Bugeye Sprite for sale in a barn that I could buy for $200. So, I sold the Corvair to another student for $200 and bought the Sprite, which was roadworthy in about three hours, once I replaced the defunct fuel pump and adjusted the SU carburetors. Everything else worked fine.

The Corvair, though, had proven to be a reliable, trouble-free vehicle for me to commute to campus from my rented house about 10 miles away. It handled just fine when I drove it. It went to San Francisco one weekend on twisty Highway 1 along the coast. I knew it wasn't a sports car, so I did not attempt to set any time records on the drive. Not once did its handling alarm me in any way.

Ralph Nader's book destroyed the marketability of an innovative car from General Motors. His book was wrong. The car was a safe as any of the other Detroit compact cars on the market at that time. I owned a 1960 Ford Falcon at another time. I owned a 1959 Studebaker Lark, another new "compact car." The Lark was an enormous disappointment, and ended up being abandoned on a ski trip to Lake Tahoe. The engine threw a rod. I took a Greyhound bus home. The Falcon was OK, but completely unremarkable. It was, however, one of the easiest cars to work on I ever owned. The Corvair never developed any problems while I owned it.

The Bugeye Sprite? Well that was an extremely fun car to own. Its convertible top an sliding side windows leaked rather a good bit, and the electrical system was erratic, to be kind. But, boy was it fun, and young women always seemed eager to get into it to go for a top-down ride in my cute little red car, so that was a bonus, to be sure.

The Corvair was a nice car, though.

So, Thanks, Ralph, for helping me buy it for so little money. No thanks for helping GW Bush win in 2000. That sucked. Big time! I will never forgive you for that catastrophe.