Account of how and why cars kill, and why the automobile manufacturers have failed to make cars safe.

One of the most controversial cars ever made, Chevrolet's Corvair is celebrated in this unique pictorial history. From his files on the Corvair - which he first road-tested in 1959 - Karl Ludvigsen presents a plethora of photos of the original 'Holden' prototypes on test and even a Corvair engine installed in a Porsche, its first running test bed. Photos of the production Corvairs down through the years are interspersed with wild and woolly prototypes and concept cars based on this unique rear-engined auto, the one whose unusual handling helped make Ralph Nader famous. Ludvigsen, who worked at GM during much of the Corvair era from 1960 to 1969, reveals styling models and describes his own involvement with one of the handsomest sports prototypes ever designed, the Corvair Monza GT. It is a feast for fans of the novel and endearing Corvair.

This book takes the reader through photos and text of the conversion of a 1966 Chevrolet Corvair into a unique muscle car replacing the air cooled, six cylinder, rear engine with a high performance Chevy 350 V8 engine up front. Unique comes in when in addition to the engine swap, the Corvair body is shortened by 14 inches.

Stories about people who own Corvair automobiles

Full and complete revision to the original How to Hotrod Covair Engines by Bill Fisher. Everything the engine builder needs to know to rebuild the Corvair for a variety of applications from street to full race. Covers all Corvair Engines from 1960-69.

Lifemobile tells the story of Benjy Bennett, an honor student with Asperger’s Syndrome, who upon graduation from high school hopelessly despairs that “there’s no place in this world” for someone as different as him. But then his widowed father brings home a “Deathmobile” – an old Corvair, famously characterized by Ralph Nader as “unsafe at any speed.” When Benjy learns that the U.S. government ultimately found Nader's sensational charges untrue, he decides that the Corvair is “not disabled, just different,” as he is, and has been unfairly stigmatized by a world that does not understand it, just as he has. The different boy becomes the different car's champion, determined to prove to the world how wrong it is about both of them. Taking Benjy and his father on a wild and emotional ride full of colorful characters and comic adventures, the Deathmobile becomes their “Lifemobile,” ultimately helping them both discover Benjy’s own uniquely satisfying place in this world.

A narrative like no other: a cultural history that explores how cars have both propelled and reflected the American experience— from the Model T to the Prius. From the assembly lines of Henry Ford to the open roads of Route 66, from the lore of Jack Kerouac to the sex appeal of the Hot Rod, America’s history is a vehicular history—an idea brought brilliantly to life in this major work by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Paul Ingrassia. Ingrassia offers a wondrous epic in fifteen automobiles, including the Corvette, the Beetle, and the Chevy Corvair, as well as the personalities and tales behind them: Robert McNamara’s unlikely role in Lee Iacocca’s Mustang, John Z. DeLorean’s Pontiac GTO , Henry Ford’s Model T, as well as Honda’s Accord, the BMW 3 Series, and the Jeep, among others. Through these cars and these characters, Ingrassia shows how the car has expressed the particularly American tension between the lure of freedom and the obligations of utility. He also takes us through the rise of American manufacturing, the suburbanization of the country, the birth of the hippie and the yuppie, the emancipation of women, and many more fateful episodes and eras, including the car’s unintended consequences: trial lawyers, energy crises, and urban sprawl. Narrative history of the highest caliber, Engines of Change is an entirely edifying new way to look at the American story.