Cars that want to kill you, yes Porsche content....

[Joe Bob]

[Joe Bob]

[tirwin]

The mighty 'vair gets a bad wrap. What could possibly be wrong with a rear-engined air-cooled car???

[proporsche]

back in the 1990 i have fixed one Corvair for one Hollywood actress..to be honest i was amazed with the engine.It had broken piston rings easy fix-(cool looking engine)- ..i drove it for a while and as Tirwin said not bad at all except the brakes you had to use your eyes to help braking;-)

Ivan

[Steam Driver]

I loved Corvairs, and they’re essentially what got me into Porsches. I owned three, two of them Turbos, when they were new, another somewhat more recently than that. Autocrossed and rallied all.

Great little cars, but not for the kinetically challenged.

[wayner]

It was the swing axle cars that were bad

The corvair had been fixed by the time the book came out

[T77911S]

I thought the Isuzu trooper was the rollover king

[reachme]

oh great. I have been looking for a new challenge, been looking at Gen4 Supras of my youth but they are getting up to air cooled turbo money now.
So my secret plan has been powerful MR2's from Japan which are very cheap and powerful and then I see this.

Why am I consistently attracted to cars that want to kill me and should I be worried about my wife?

[wayner]

Depends?

Does she support the purchase?

[Joe Bob]

Roll over king. Suzuki Samari. Nicknamed “somersaults”.

[Nickshu]

Here's my Corvair...yeah it's an unsafe piece of junk (Photo taken at the top of a local canyon, chased the 356 up and down it - and it didn't roll over!):



The Corvair was the most innovative thing GM did in the era...a huge gamble and some neat engineering. The handling issues were much ado about nothing: https://www.corvaircorsa.com/handling01.html

[wayner]

One thing the early corvairs shared with the beetle and the 356 is the swing axle concept.

Later Corvairs added second joint in the axle, just like vw eventually did with the beetle, (and porsche did by replacing the 356 swing axles with a 911 with two joints as well :-)

Swing axles meant that the 356 has the same handling quirk that only exhibits itself on either car if something goes wrong with the nut behind the wheel :-)

[mreid]

These cars are like high strung thorough bred horses. They can sense when a rookie is riding (driving) and pull all sorts of stunts to test the limits of the rider (drivers) capabilities. If you know how to ride (drive) them, you have no issues, but have a moment of hesitation and blamo!

[Eric Coffey]

Originally Posted by Joe Bob

Roll over king. Suzuki Samari. Nicknamed “somersaults”.

Yup. Had one in high school. Rolled it. The inside rear wheel barely kissed a curb on a low-speed tight turn which sent it over on it's side, fast. No time to catch it/counter steer. Two guys in a garbage truck were passing by and saw it. They jumped out and helped me tip it back upright. Somehow the clutch pedal got bent, so I had to bend it back into position. Collected my scatted belongings from the resulting "yard sale" (windows were open) and then drove off like nothing happened, lol...

Friend had one and rolled it soon after.
Those things should've come with "frame sliders" from the factory.