updated 2002-09-13

The Story (or - "Why Buy a Corvair When There Are Loads of Boring Cars at Twice the Price?") ...

NEWS!!! - I found my Corvair!  Come see the Beast!

In the late spring of 1966, my father and his brother, both freshly-graduated from the University of Alberta and new into their jobs as electrical engineers at GE, head into Golden Mile Motors on Eglinton Avenue in Toronto.  There, a salesman tells them, "I have just the car for you."   Granted, all salesmen say that, but this one does something a little different.  He puts them into a Marina Blue 1966 Corvair Corsa - 140 hp, four carbs, positraction, optional headrests on vinyl bucket seats.  This car rocks.  They love it.  They buy it.  That autumn, up in Gananoque amidst the fall colours, they stop, pose the car, and take a few "glamour shots".  (See the Corsa in Autumn, 1966.)

Time passes, and by 1969, both brothers are getting married.  Both new families will need a car.  My aunt doesn't own one, my mother does.  So my father sells his half of the car to his brother.  He and my aunt drive it a few more years, then, as Ontario winters begin to become apparent, they sell it and move on.

My mother's car, now, was a 1967 Chevy II - as base as a base model can get.  Four-door, tan-on-tan, straight six automatic, cloth bench seats front and back, not even a radio.  It's a good car - it gives us 16 years, but my dad loathes it the entire time we have it.  Being a kid, I really don't get the reasons why.   To me, what could be cooler than a tired old Chevy II?  Of course,  I never had been for a ride in a Corsa.  Finally, in 1975 we got a new 'baby' - a 1974 Dodge Tradesman.  This still serves as the family camper and  is still in top shape.  The Corvair now drifts into memory, coming up only in fond reminiscences. 

Fast forward to 1998.  I am working in the States (Buffalo) and old reliable, my 1985 Honda Prelude, can't be licensed down there because it has the wrong exhaust on it.  (How was ANYONE building cars with no catalytic converters in 1985?  Still, I bet MY car ran as clean as anything I saw on the roads there....)  I need to find another car because I can't run Ontario plates down there forever.  Still, I know I will be coming home in a couple of years and I don't want to face the same problems again, so I need a car that will meet both Canadian and US standards.  This proves a lot more difficult than one would think.  Three months go by and I am nowhere near a purchase.  Reading the rules very carefully, I notice that anything older than 25 years (now 15) can cross the border without meeting anything at all.  Hmmmm..... 

Looking through old car magazines, I find a 1972 Buick Skylark for $3000.  It's a solid car, looks like a keeper.  The problem is, I just don't have the heart.  I know what I am going to do to it by putting it through a couple of Buffalo winters and ramming it up and down the QEW every weekend.  I figure that if this car made it along this far, it deserves better than me.  So, in the end, I end up buying a newer car.  Still, a bug is planted.  

I keep buying and looking through these car magazines, and one day see an ad for a disassembled Corvair in New York State.  It gets me thinking, "Dad always loved that car.  I wonder what the deal was."  So I start reading up on it.  The more I read, and the more I learn, the more interesting these cars become.  It may well be that the Corvair is the most interesting and innovative car Detroit ever built.  I finally get why my dad hated the Chevy II so much.  So now, 30-odd years later, I decided to find another one.... (and I DID - mostly)

Thus began the VairQuest.  


This Corvair Ring site is owned by
Chris King

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