A Daydreaming Designer Imagines The Corvair Surviving Into Days Of Disco

Like a river that don’t know where it’s flowing
I took a wrong turn and I just kept going

The above lyrics to Springsteen’s Hungry Heart could well apply to my latest series here at the Autopian. Bruce was singing about a protagonist that left his wife and kids, ostensibly for a gallon of milk or something, and then never returned; he then continues on his wayward, unlikely path. For us, we’re looking at what might have happened if General Motors continued making the controversial Chevy Corvair. Such decisions, like Bruce’s, have long term impacts on the future, especially if we’re talking about a large automaker.

In case you don’t know, the Corvair was GM’s first compact, and air cooled rear-engined car that debuted in late 1959. The car ran through two different generations before being unceremoniously dropped exactly a decade later, a victim of poor sales due to public misunderstanding of the rather unique design and bad publicity due to handling issues with the earliest models.

sources: Wikipedia/Stephen Foskett, Wikipedia/ Greg Gjerdingen, Wikipedia/SFoskett, Wikipedia/Robert Spinello , and Wikipedia/crwpitman 

A Quick Recap

In an earlier installment, we did a what-if to see what a 1970 Third Generation Corvair might have looked like. Water cooling plus trunks front AND rear were improvements that were added to the 1965-69 car, as well as a wagon bodystyle. The whole car was wrapped in new sheetmetal that echoed Chevy’s style of the early seventies in cars like the Camaro and the Alright Alright Alright Chevelle.

source: tradeuniquecars (car for sale)

The Generation IV

Let’s say it’s now 1975. Surely now GM will kill the Corvair layout by now, right? No. Again, as Bruce said, let’s just keep going.

As the disco era dawns, we see car design starting to make a change to the more angular look that will reach its peak in the early eighties. However, GM will want to preserve as much of the new-for-1970 car as possible, so for this Gen IV car we’ll keep a lot of the basic body. That really means new nose and tail sections; newly introduced 5MPH impact standards will require beefier bumpers.  Those slick sail panels will not fit the approaching ‘formal roof’ styles of the day so those will get cut back.

source: Shannons (car for sale),  tradeuniquecars (car for sale), and classiccars (car for sale)

Up front, just-allowed rectangular headlamps will modernize the front end (like on the real Vega-based Monza, that would never have existed in this reality).

Coup De Corvair

Big news for ’75, however, is the introduction of new bodystyles! First up is the Monza coupe. Here, a popular hatchback is grafted onto the tail, necessitating stylish heat exhaust vents in the C pillars. Combined with the front trunk, it would offer unmatched cargo carrying capability.

source: Wikipedia Commons/Signac

A nose with partially hidden headlights like a Lamborghini Jarama sets off the front end from more pedestrian examples. There are air holes inside of those headlight buckets to provide air to the front brakes since this thing would likely be faster than you’d think and fade out the little front discs quickly.

Overall, it’s a very different look from the other Corvair models and even the earlier Gen III car despite using exactly the same doors, windshield, and quarter windows as the 1970-74 car.

Brother From Another Mother

Hey, what about the Pontiac division? By 1975 they would certainly be clamoring to get in on the action, so General Motors could offer a restyled version of the Corvair called the Pomona (for the famous drag strip). While it likely wouldn’t be available in all of the Corvair’s body styles, you’d still get the mini-Trans Am hatchback Monza clone coupe with gold trimmed alloys (off of a Holden HZ, of all things) and clear covers (covered in a honeycomb pattern) over the lights that allow you a ‘flash to pass’ but drop down when the lights are on for US legality. If Sally Field needed to drive a companion car to Burt Reynold’s Firebird in Smokey and The Bandit, this would be it.

source: GM via Monaro Club

Chevann and Truxter: Who Shrank My Bus?

Now, we’re gonna get crazy and go super ambitious.

Remember that the very first Corvair offered van and pickup body styles when it was introduced? These disappeared after a few years (and before the VW Bus got rather popular).

sources: Bring A Trailer and Wikipedia/Mr Choppers

We’ll bring them back! The same rear drivetrain, three rows of seats or large cargo space; it’d offer the space efficiency of the VW Type II but with more adequate power and a real HVAC system.

For the styling, I can’t think of a better inspiration than the Beetle-based Brubaker Box:

source: The Autopian

However, when you push and pull the Brubaker Box shape to the size and proportions of the Corvair chassis, it looks totally different and doesn’t really work. Still, there is another inspiration I can see.

One could imagine the designers assigned to the Corvair van hanging out in the GM Tech Center Cafeteria in Warren and, out of their cloud of cigarette smoke, seeing Michael Lathers walk by and striking up a conversation. Lathers is one of those names you probably don’t know, but as a designer of the landmark 1973-78 GMC Motorhome you probably should. He was also the man who penned the 1977 GM RTS bus.

If you don’t know the GM RTS bus, you need to know it right now. One of the only urban transit buses to offer curved side glass, it was incredibly futuristic when introduced in 1975 and still looks good to this day. I mean, Mercedes Streeter likes the design so much that she bought one of her own, despite not necessarily having the space or need for something that carries 40 people. It’s a shame that municipalities got such a cool machine, and civilians offered nothing like it. JUST LOOK AT IT!:

source: Mercedes Streeter

Let’s pretend that somehow, some way, Lathers was able to collaborate with his lunch buddies and the RTS design got to be translated into our Corvair MPV, the Chevann. We wouldn’t see something even remotely this cool until the Toyota Van a decade later. This would have been the first (US) minivan and could have been a game changer for the General.

source: transitsales (bus for sale)

We could also offer other versions of it as well, including a partially panel sided cargo van and a little pickup called the Truxter. Note that the Truxter would have a flat bed floor but there would a huge pass-through sealed cargo space accessible through locking doors above the rocker panels (sort of the like the cargo area on a Greyhound bus):

Inside Chevann and Truxter, you’d get an instrument panel sort of similar to the controls in the fabled RTS bus. Since the engine and cooling system is all in back, I did a ‘backwards’ climate control where the heater core and A/C unit (if equipped) are in back with the engine and pump air through ceiling ductwork (and possibly floor) to up front, even to blow on the windshield for defogging:

There’s a little bit of something for everyone in the Generation IV Corvair family, provided to you in a way only the world’s largest automobile maker could.

Is It Done?

As strange as this full lineup of rear-engined cars in the era of Boogie Nights seems, the possibilities seem rather intriguing. These would be tremendously space efficient cars with massive cargo capacity, and if people could get used to nose-heavy-understeering crap with hilarious torque steer, couldn’t they have adapted to driving a car that with a layout that many enthusiasts swear by? We’ll never know, but there’s no use in stopping this bizarre alternate reality path now.

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