I seriously considered buying a used one in about 1968 or so. The deal
fell apart when the mechanic I took it to looked underneath and found it
was just about to fall apart (body rot).
I don't know if that was a typical problem.
From: Walter Hamler
In 1962 I was in the Navy stationed at the Ordinance Test Station in
China Lake, out in the Mojave desert. I was barely 20 years old and
had eyes for a young lady that worked in the photo lab where I was,
along with several hundred others. I was flirting with her one day,
threatening to pull her pony tail. She whipped around so quick,
shoved all 210 pounds of me against the wall, and simply said in a
stern voice, "Don't!" I didn't, apologized, and sheepishly left the
room in a hurry. Several hours later she quietly asked me to follow
her outside. There she explained that the year prior, she had taken
a 61 Corvair over a cliff and the rear scalp and skull cap of her
head was lost somewhere in the canyon below where the car stopped, on
top of her. She had had a blowout, and she readily admitted that she
had overreacted and overcorrected, causing her to spinout and go over
the side. She never did blame the car, but her parents did, and after
many years in court was awarded a settlement. We became close
friends after that, but we never talked about the accident again. I
knew it was a very touchy subject with her. And, I never mentioned
the pony tail again :-)
In the late 80's I had a chance to buy a later model Monza with the
turbo charger, but was simply afraid to do so. Wish I had now.
Walt
On Thu, Aug 30, 2012 at 5:13 PM, Larry Colen <l...@red4est.com>
wrote:
On Aug 30, 2012, at 2:04 PM, Paul Stenquist wrote:
Utter nonsense. It's one nincompoop's list. The 1961 Corvair,
for example, is there only because an idiot wrote a book. And the
1995 Explorer is there by virtue of some bad tires. But since
these cars are so awful, I'll take the Series III XKE V12 off
someone's hands or that Biturbo Maserati. Hell, I'm even willing
to shoulder the burden of a Ferrari Mondial.
My understanding is that there were indeed some issues with the
early corvairs, though not nearly as bad as a particular egocentric
attention whore would have liked you to believe. As I said, some
of the most interesting cars were also on the list. The elite was
designed to win races, and it has been argued that if a racecar
didn't fall apart on the cool down lap, then it was too heavy
making it more robust than it needed to be. Chapman was
absolutely brilliant in that way, and I'd love to see a modern
version of the Elite, made with modern materials and technology.
Out of a motor the size and weight of the Coventry Climax 1.3
(originally designed for water pumps for fire fighting) you could
probably get two or three times the horsepower today, on street
fuel, without forced induction.
I'd much rather have a six cylinder e-type (Jag never made a car it
called the XKE) than a v-12. They were faster. I'd love to
upgrade one with modern engine management, and a few other tech
upgrades as a track car.
Paul
On Aug 30, 2012, at 2:51 PM, Larry Colen wrote:
http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1658545,00.html
They also have some of the most interesting cars on this list too.
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