Ralph Nader: Unsafe at Any Auto Show

National History Day project by Abe Zumwalt of Charles Wright Academy, focusing on Ralph Nader's legendary book and its effect on the Chevrolet Corvair (and the American auto industry as a whole).

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• Ralph
• Nader
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[robertplattbell1]

The design was dated - based on the VW Beetle, which was a pre-war design, long in the tooth. By the early 1970's, VW was working on the replacement for the Beetle - the Golf/Rabbit. The VW was phased out, it never would have passed safety standards and emissions.

Porsche soldiered on, but even they had to abandon air cooling - it cannot control engine temperatures closely enough to control emissions. The Porsche remains the last of this breed of rear-engined cars.

[robertplattbell1]

Of course, that was also the design adopted by BMW for its "Neuclass" 1602 and 2002 sedans, which later morphed into the venerable 3-series. This bit of automotive DNA is present in every BMW made today.

[robertplattbell1]

But what really killed the Corvair (and the olds turbo, the aluminum-block buick, the tempest transaxle, the Delorean OHC six, etc.) was cheap gas.

A 350 v-8 with a quadrajet and a THM 350 was a lot cheaper than some esoteric air-cooled engine. Why pay more for less? That is what killed the corvair.

The arab oil embargo, of course, would change all that.

[robertplattbell1]

As you might imagine, most folks with the swing axle cars never checked the tire pressures, or if they did, pumped them all to 32 psi, the standard pressure for bias ply tires at the time.

By about 1965 or so, swing axles disappeared in almost every car design. Porsche, corvair, VW, Ford MUTT, all went to an independent rear suspension, with inner and outer CV joints. This prevented the axle from rotating and "jacking" the car over.

[robertplattbell1]

The swing axle design relies on tire pressure differential to keep it safe. Rear tires are pumped up to 32 psi (or more) while the fronts are set at 15 or so (!!) to promote oversteer.

The porsche, having larger rear wheels (in many models) had an additional benefit as well. Also, most Porsches had a sway bar, which limited the lower travel of the swing arm to prevent the "jacking" effect that plagued the corvair. The sway bar was an option on the corvair.

[robertplattbell1]

Nader did not kill small cars at GM, GM did.

When I worked there, in the 1970's, the story went that a West Coast distributor asked a local California dealer, "When are people on the West Coast going to wise up and stop driving those funny little Japanese cars?"

Perhaps the story is apocryphal, but it illustrates the attitude at GM at the time I worked there, which would appear to be about a decade before you were born.

[robertplattbell1]

GM's next attempt at a small car was the VEGA. As Delorean put it, the thinking was, in Detroit, "Small car, small profits" and small cars were built only reluctantly.

And buyers were punished with sparse interiors and unnecessarily cramped space - so that, the thinking went, they would be motivated to "trade up" to a midsize or full-sized car.

Meanwhile, the Japanese were making better and better small cars.

Your video is interesting, but it oversimplifies a very complicated issue.

[robertplattbell1]

Once these designs were changed, the rollover problem was eliminated. But for the Corvair, it was too late. And yes, it was unfair that hippies of the time thought the VW as "cool" and big bad old GM's Corvair was "unsafe" - but that is public perception. VW didn't make the mistake of trying to investigate Nader, and thus escaped most of the PR wrath.

Note that NONE of these designs would pass safety or crash tests today. The VW beetle, on which the corvair was based, was very unsafe.

[robertplattbell1]

You might want to read Nader's other book, "Small on Safety, the Story of the Volkswagen" which I read while a student at GMI. You see, the swing axle design was just unsafe, regardless of whether it was in a VW Beetle, the Corvair (a clone of the Beetle design) or the Ford MUTT (a Vietnam-era Jeep-like car that also rolled over). In all three cases, the cure was simple - chuck the swing-axle design in favor of truly independent suspension (with four CV joints).

[ASeventhSign]

@thestinson108

Wow, Nazi? People aren't going give your opinion any consideration when you present such a drastic misuse of terms. We have a word, well grounded in the common vernacular to describe nanny state complainers like Nader. He's a pussy. Pussy paints a colorful illustration that everyone can relate to. Everyone knows a pussy. Your contemporaries will pause, and reply, "Why yes sir, Nader is indeed a pussy".