Word: corvairs
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Your breathless account of all the high-level maneuvering at mighty G.M. to bring forth the Corvair mouse reads like a novel, but it's a lot of amiable nonsense. In this age of space miracles, why give so much importance to so small an accomplishment as moving a motor to the rear end? The day to celebrate a great achievement would be when G.M. designs a really safe...
...first test of the 1960 auto market came last week as the new cars rolled into the nation's showrooms-and the rush was on. The big sales news of the week was made by Chevrolet's compact Corvair. In its first two days of public showing, the Corvair chalked up orders and deliveries of 26,000 cars, more than 35% of Chevy's two-day total of 75,000. The news was both good and bad for Chevy: the company had hoped to sell one Corvair for every five Chevrolets; instead, it was selling...
...line to the public, showed 15 models that are the longest, lowest and widest that Ford has ever built. The company also announced factory list prices for its compact car, the Falcon. A two-door model will list for $1,746 v. $1,810 for Chevrolet's Corvair; a four-door Falcon will list for $1,803 v. $1,860 for a Corvair. For its imported line Ford showed a restyled, British-built Anglia with a four-cylinder engine that has a top speed of 70 m.p.h., gets up to 35 miles per gallon. Ford says that...
...stretched fuel economy at first by 15%-and eventually to 19 miles per gallon. But Cole still hankered to perfect a rear engine for cars. In his spare time he designed a tank powered by an air-cooled, horizontally opposed engine (the same kind as in the Corvair). When the Korean war broke out, the Army grabbed the plan for its T-41 tank, and Cole was made boss of Cadillac's huge plant in Cleveland. There his idea of building a rear-engine small car took shape. Every night in his room at the Lake Shore Hotel...
Cole rapidly began to build his own team-the team that was to build Corvair -and he laid plans to triple Chevy's 851-man engineering staff. Just a few weeks after Cole moved in, G.M. held a top executive planning session, and Board Chairman Alfred Sloan Jr. demanded unexpectedly: "What about Chevy?" It was the kind of moment that every aggressive young executive dreams about. Cole replied with cool confidence: "I just happen to have some plans for expanding Chevrolet engineering, and I'm ready to show them any time you wish." G.M. appreciates that kind...