Unsafe At Any Speed? 1966 Chevrolet Corvair Corsa - Jay Leno's Garage

you know it's all how it makes you feel and to me this makes me feel like a more expensive car than it is if you're on any kind of a budget it's just a great classic car to restore between dune buggy and aircraft you can get fuel inject anything you want to do and you can make it whatever you want it to be and that's what i love about it episode pandemic edition the car we're featuring today my 1966 chevrolet corvair corsa this was a revolutionary car for chevrolet a revolutionary car for america flat six air cooled four-speed manual transmission rear engine rear drive the corvair was developed to retaliate against the valiant the falcon and amc had a rambler rather had some entry-level cars initially there were about 80 horsepower by the time you hit the mid 60s with the corsa i think it's fair to say it was a sports car as i said four speed uh this is a turbocharged model 180 horsepower that's 100 horsepower more than i have when it came out with 80. don't forget this is this is the first production turbocharged car a lot of people say the oldsmobile jetfire was the first one i thought it was too but they came out about the same time but the corvair was actually first and the ultimate was second and the oldsmobile only lasted two years or something so this one uh gets the credit this is the first air cooled flat six turbocharged car and uh it did quite well it actually beat porsche in uh what's that scca racing in the 60s uh they had the yanko don yanko we we did that once before on this website we did uh we featured my yanko stinger that was the racing version of this car don yanker was sort of the carol shelby of chevrolet he bought a hundred corvairs in white and he did what they call stage two four carburetors uh he did some body work added a few scoops a few other things suspension changes positive traction rear end different steering wheel and went racing and did quite well uh i i have one of those and uh one of the 100 and it's a wonderful car to drive and so is this i know the other one is 190 horsepower this 180 but this actually feels faster when the turbo kicks in it's it's impressive it goes well i remember back in the day used to have ads with guys with you know the little cap and the driving gloves and that seemed a bit much but it was not far off the mark i mean it really was a great handling car the first car i think first american car was all independent suspension all the way around corvette didn't have that until until later ed cole uh of gm he uh terrific terrific engineer uh you know back in the early days gm had engineers running things and they brought in marketing guys now they're back to doing engineers again which i think is really good everybody at the top is an engineer and ed cole wanted something different he didn't want to make another you know falcon or valiant or even chevy nova which which they did produce also he wanted something totally different and he told his guys come up with something like this and this is what they came up with this was revolutionary for america back in the time the only other rear engine car really was the tucker and that never really got off the ground and this was quite successful uh until the mustang came along the mustang is what really killed this car you know they like to pretend that ralph nader did but he really didn't ralph nader actually prolonged the car because ralph nader they were going to kill the car in 66 after the mustang debuted but they were so incensed that that nader had gone after it and they were afraid it would look like they were knuckling under so they continued producing it until 69 because they didn't make any turbos i think after 66 or 67 they just sort of built standard corvairs until 69 until it kind of faded from the scene um and an sae report in the early 70s concluded that the corvair was no more or less dangerous than any other car at the time and by the time this model had come out the 65 the 66 they had redesigned the suspension and all the problems that the nader was complaining about were pretty much done with anyway but that's another whole story we've gone over that a million times uh let's talk about this one i think it's just a great looking car it's the most european looking american car i've ever seen even now when i drive it you know people under 30 go is that a common gear is that is that italian no it's it's a chevy what a chevy corvair well item doesn't have a radiator no it's a rear engine i mean i'm i've always know what carvers are but i guess if you're under 40 you don't see them so you're amazed by them and and it's a wonderful wonderful driving car uh just look at the lines on it i mean i think you could really almost produce this body style today and it would be it always looks like the present you know this is not an old-fashioned looking car a lot of cars just look like the error the countach looks like the 80s though the volkswagen bug looks like the 60s and the 70s this this is pretty timeless this is pretty timeless uh i think it's a great looking design i love the front end that kind of shark nose i love the fact that it just has these subtle curves all the way through it it's it's really a great great car come on let's take a look at that turbocharged engine have you been to this website you know my fixation with round taillights you just think they look the best and they look beautiful in this car i like the two-tone i like this being gray rather than the solid color great looking car here let's open this up pretty exotic for 1966 especially for an american car you know when i got this thing it had the turbo off the 150 horsepower car so that was wrong and it just had a lot of wrong things on it so it took us a while to get it back to where it should be this is a 100 stock with the exception of the carburetor this came with i think a one barrel carter carburetor on it which is somewhat primitive the su much better works much better in this application there's no wastegate there's no there's none of that here it just you really feel the power in third gear a lot of people complained these weren't as fast off the line as the carburetor cars but if you tune them right they are and once once you hit about 3500 and the turbo really begins to spool it really kicks in it's a lot of fun you can feel it and it feels very european spare tire obviously right here all the weight is in the back you've got aluminum engine 164 cubic inches you've got i guess there are iron cylinders with aluminum uh casing and everything else overhead valve obviously these turbo engines were a whole different breed than the uh the standard corvair they had different valves at higher temperature valves they could take the heat uh combustion chambers a lot of things were subtle and different they really wanted to make this a fast sports car and 180 horsepower again today doesn't sound like much but you're only pushing 2500 pounds so they're they're pretty quick and they're a lot of fun to drive against the 66 porsche i i think this would probably take it i don't know if it would in handling but maybe with a few tweaks it might but nice clean setup distributor right here alternator that belt's a little funky the way it goes around a lot of people have belts fly off i've never had that problem it always seemed fine to me and i i run at high revs all the time so that being said i carry an extra belt just in case but as you can see it's it's a pretty cool setup come on let's take a look i'll show you the front of the car actually quite a large trunk the famous single master cylinder i should put a dual in there and i always carry that extra fan belt uh but look at that so you got all kinds of room in a big trunk and this is a four seater car don't forget that i don't know what's prettier the front end of the back end i think this is just a great looking car i mean it is so advanced for 66 which things are still pretty big and garish in 66 so this is a nice european car and the turbo with all it was 2500 bucks that's a heck of a deal pretty good and red especially good color come on i'll show you the interior the cabin comfortable place to be got a full complement of gauges here you got 140 mile an hour speedometer very very optimistic you've got your clock you've got the cylinder head temperature you've got manifold that's a boost gauge basically gas and of course tachometer and radio cigarette lighter all that kind of stuff you have the optional fake wood steering wheel which just always makes me laugh but it's actually very nice a nice thin rim very sporty here with the three deals on it uh you know what's so funny these were considered not a success because they only sold 1.8 million of them i said this a bunch of times on the show whenever i talk about corporates but it shows you how times change you sell one point million of anything now oh my god you're president of the company but back then mustang was just kicking their butt mustang was selling four to one over i mean they must have sold three or four million mustangs in the same amount of time so the corvair just suffered by comparison plus the mustang had a v8 and in america we don't have any great love for a six cylinder a six cylinder in people's minds is the second car the the six similar you get for your daughter's graduation you know that kind of deal so nobody ever thought as six cylinders as performance really in america compared to europe so that's why they did this turbo deal but jesus is i think it's one of the greatest american cars certainly one of the most innovative cars in the 1960s i am so the complete opposite of ralph and i like ralph nader i don't i'm not one of those people i mean i think he's trying to do the right thing and fighting for people's rights and that kind of stuff i just think he was misguided and didn't didn't really study the issue because as i said the society of automotive engineers studied the corvair and they determined it was no less safe than anything else but that's neither here nor there at that point um let's take it for a ride we don't i think we're not going to put this up on the left because there's really nothing to see it's unibody all underneath and you got the engine in the back there so uh come on i think you want to hear this thing uh it it really goes good i mean i enjoy driving this i think you get the right suspension you know there are so many corvair clubs and they're just a great bunch of folks in those corvair clubs willing to help anybody that's got one of these you can still pick these up reasonable uh clark's corvair uh that's just one of the many places i've gotten parts from and these guys are great they keep this mark going they're all coming out with new ideas and new things and new ways to get more horsepower this has got the positive traction rear end it's sort of a transaxle gearbox at the rear it developed for this car i mean it's a unique automobile there's nothing like it and come on i'll start it up i always like to wait till the cylinder head gauge moves a little bit before i really step on it [Music] sounds sporty come on let's see what it does [Music] see see there's that turbo kicking in hey there you are you know there were so many things wrong with this car when i got it had the wrong turbo charger on it had the wrong springs at the distributor put heavier springs in it the trouble was we had a a ground problem we weren't getting full ground so alternating was it was taking 18 and a half volts and it wasn't running we could never get it straight but we finally got it all together finally got it dialed in and now it oh my god it just pulls so nicely it feels like a lot more than 180 horsepower but that's what lightweight will do for you know that was always colin chapman's thing you know for every couple of pounds you take off you add a couple of horsepower and uh it's certainly true great greenhouse in this car good visibility rear view visibility side visibility it's so funny all the manufacturers work hard to try and get something three thousand pounds get within cl because you know you gotta have the steel door beams and all that stuff where's this thing 2500 pounds not a bit of carbon fiber on it of course you take off the steel bumpers and some of the other stuff you get it down even less but as i said the real savior of these cars are the corvair clubs you know because they keep them all going and you know it's the kind of car you can have something really unusual for under 10 grand in a lot of cases uh you know i think 10 grand is the new thousand dollars in the sense that when i was a kid you could buy a good nice running second-hand car for a thousand dollars now it's about 10 times what it was in the 60s but i remember seeing corvallis for 200 bucks 300 bucks when i was in college some a lot less than that and nice ones too now they're about 10 grand 12 grand i think a lot of people got scared off by them which is a good value for you if you're a car enthusiast because i love that turbo head cole was a genius and a great engineer really took a lot of chances the small block chevy was his he developed that whole deal with which essentially still used in some form even today of course the corvair which they said was not a success i think it was i think it's a very memorable car and you know there were no disc brakes when this was this was out there's no power booster on it but these drum brakes are pretty good actually not bad at all i mean if you're not tracking the car i think you're fine for street use they're more than adequate it's like the turbo kicks in it's fascinating to think how far they could have gone with this flat six if they'd uh if they would have you know kept it in the lineup you know it's funny the last version of almost any gm car is always the best you know the fiero was supposed to be a commuter car and uh by the time they were done it was actually not a bad sports car uh that final fiera was pretty good same thing with the firebird you know i've got the last uh fire not the very last fire but last generation 2002. i drove one at uh at the daytona the pace car and it's great and it was great it was basically just a four-seater corvette how are you how you doing well thank you see there's a lady there with white hair like me and she loves my corvette anyway i i drove in at talladega and uh i was impressed with how fast it was i i got one set at my garage it probably aired a couple weeks ago but um you can check that one out [Music] 5500 is about as much your revs you'll get out of this thing turbo makes all the difference in the world fun thing is you can turn these into anything you want you can get full wheel disc brake kits for it i think somebody's even making a five-speed transmission is that possible uh i heard that somewhere i don't think the truth to that multiple carburetion there's guys that do cams and pistons and every other thing for them i mean the club is very very active there's a lot still a lot of corvairs out there it's got to be well over half a million at least out there and they've used this engine in uh light aircraft and dune buggies and everything else it was kind of like the american volkswagen in that sense silver had temperatures about 300 degrees it's about 75 degrees here today in l.a you know it's all how it makes you feel and to me this makes me feel like a more expensive car than it is if you're on any kind of a budget it's just a great classic car to restore because as i said everything's available and the aftermarket is filled with parts because between dune buggy and aircraft you can get fuel inject anything you want for this and you can make it whatever you want it to be and that's what i love about it i would say these are pretty low maintenance you know obviously no cooling system nothing there you have to do to it in the winter the heat is nothing to write home about but dang it's as good as a porsche or volkswagen feel that turbo pulling 10 pounds of boost right there my speedometer is reading about 10 or 12 miles an hour on the low side because i got these bigger wheels on it this is the third corvair we've done on this website i got the corvair ram side the truck and i got the yanko stinger and this kind of completes the trio anyway i hope you enjoyed this piece of americana uh this is a real piece of american history you can buy pretty reasonable you know if they only made a few thousand of these or a couple of hundred this would be a fifty or sixty thousand dollar car but because they made so many of them you know to those of us that love them and like to drive them it's a heck of a deal so check them out if you see one go for a drive i think you'll uh i think you'll be impressed thank you and thanks to all the members of the corvair clubs for all the help they give me over the years and clark's corvair and all the other vendors i'm sorry i don't have them on the tip of my tongue right now but that's i blame it on kovit okay you guys see you later thanks [Music] uh

Channel: Jay Leno's Garage

Views: 523,525

Rating: 4.9691634 out of 5

Keywords: Jay, Lenos, Garage, Corvair, Chevrolet, Chevy, air cooled, flat 6, Ralph Nader, Unsafe At Any Speed, pandemic edition, car porn, car nerd, turbo, gearhead, Jay Leno, Jay Leno's Garage, car reviews, classic cars, vintage cars, sports cars, super cars, cars, jay leno garage, jay lenos garage, car collection, cnbc, 1966 Chevrolet Corvair Corsa, Chevrolet Corvair Corsa, Corvair Corsa, chevy corvair, 1966 corvair, chevrolet corvair, 1966 chevrolet corvair, unsafe At Any Speed?, JLG

Id: II1uoBn6whw

Length: 19min 40sec (1180 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 15 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/RobDickinson]

oh this was on queens gambit, wondering what it was, looked nice, American but compact (ish).

[u/DC_Farmboy]

It's been a minute since I watched Jay Leno. I really appreciate his delivery in these videos and his love for automobiles shines through. We're lucky to have him.

[u/Futurewolf]

The gen 2 Corvair has the best styling of any American car from the '60s except maybe the '68-'69 Dodge Charger. Fight me.

[u/biggsteve81]

When he is warming up the car in the garage you can see the turbo lag from when he presses the accelerator and it revs up. Incredible.

[u/chucchinchilla]

Maybe I missed it but no mention of the VW Beetle, the other rear-engined air-cooled economy car of the day?