I Survived the “Death Trap” Twice
Was my dad secretly trying to get rid of me by putting me behind the wheel of a Corvair?
As parents or grandparents, we all shudder at the thought of our children getting behind the wheel. I’m sure my parents worried a lot more than they let on, but they had no idea how many times I escaped serious accidents or even death. Today, my grown children constantly tease me about how slowly I drive. They would be shocked to know that my driving has not always been that way!
I got my long awaited driver’s license and began driving in 1965. My first car was a 1956 Chevrolet Bel Air, which my dad custom painted for me. He was a long-time Chevy employee whose career was paint and body repair.
Dad scoured through his mishmash of empty paint cans in his shop at home, mixed a collection of the leftover paint, and created a masterpiece like the one no one else had.
I’m still not sure if he was just having fun at my expense, or if his concocted plan was just an unusual way of keeping track of me. For sure, everyone recognized my red, white and blue car any time it was on the street. That is when the “it takes a village” idea really worked against me. It was impossible for me to go stealth and get away with anything without someone reporting it to my dad!
At the time, Dad drove a 1961 Corvair, which I received as a hand me down in 1967. Over the next three years, I had three different Corvairs to drive. Our family always had “very used” cars. According to dad a car was not really broke in until it had at least 100,000 miles on its odometer!
During this same time, Ralph Nader made the claim in his book Unsafe at Any Speed, that the Chevrolet Corvair was the most dangerous automobile on the road in the 1960s.
According to Nader the Corvair’s unconventional design that used a swing-axle suspension system, required a different tire pressure than most conventional cars. In addition, its inability to handle heavy loads often resulted in poor handling and oversteering problems.
However, many satisfied owners experienced none of these issues. My dad thought Chevy’s new rear engine car was the best thing since sliced bread, so he wasn’t the least bit hesitant to drive one himself and eventually have me drive one.
“Despite decades of experience racing and testing cars, I’m nervous’ Nader said. “The Corvair is the one-car accident. He wrote that a design flaw in the rear suspension made the car likely to flip over when driven in abrupt maneuvers.”
Brock Yates, who wrote a column for Car and Driver credited Nader for killing Chevy’s small car and branded Nader as one of the “Safety Nazis”, a group who “helped usher in a host of emissions and safety regulations that hobbled performance.”
It was not Nader’s advocacy or a myriad of lawsuits, which rang the death knell for the Corvair, rather it was the innovativeness of Ford, which flooded the market with the its ever-popular Mustang.
The train track nosedive
My junior year I began driving to school. Normally, I would pick up my buddy, Bill, who lived just a few miles west of my place, and head on to school. Bill and I still laugh about the shared experience we had on one of those mornings. He had just climbed into my Corvair when I remembered I had left something I needed at home. That meant we would have to quickly drive back to my house, pick up the item, and still make it to school on time.
I lived in a very small town with a railroad tracks that ran through it. Back in those days, the railroad crossings did not have a gradual incline and the tracks laid at least 2–3 feet above the road’s regular surface.
I admit that morning I was driving much too fast, but it did provide us with the thrill of a lifetime. Usually, it is necessary to slow down before going over the crossing, but that morning I failed to slow down enough. As we crossed the tracks, the front of my Corvair did a nosedive into the pavement and the back end of the car came up off the road. It almost seemed like slow motion as we teetered there with the car vertical to the pavement for what seemed like more than a few seconds, but fortunately, the car did not go ahead and flip over. That morning it was my poor judgement, not the Corvair’s design flaw that nearly caused an accident.
I must admit we were very lucky that morning. I grabbed the book I had left at home and we proceeded to school at a much slower pace. Yes, we were late. Nevertheless, we were unscathed!
The 90 mph blow out on I-70
A couple of years later I flirted with death again, this time riding in the back seat of my third Corvair, a sporty Monza with four on the floor. My girlfriend and I had decided to go with my college friend, Fred, and his girlfriend to his home in Maryland for a few days. We decided we could leave Bloomington and drive straight through to his mother’s apartment in Bladensburg. The 625-mile trip would normally take a little over 12 hours to drive.
Since Fred didn’t have a car and worse yet didn’t even have a driver’s license, we decided to take my car and divide the driving time. I took the first turn and drove 3 or 4 hours. Fred’s girlfriend, Kathi, took her turn next.
I remember sitting in the back seat and glancing at the speedometer. I noticed Kathi was really trying to make up time. She was driving around 90 mph on I-70 when suddenly there was a loud bang. The Corvair’s tire blew out and the car began to swerve back and forth from one lane to the next. Fortunately, traffic was light that night.
Kathi’s instinct and driving experience kicked in and saved our lives that night. “I just kept thinking don’t brake! Don’t brake.” She said. If she had applied the brakes at that speed our car would have flipped, rolled over, and most likely have killed all of us. None of us was wearing seat belts!
When the car finally came to rest along the right side of the interstate, we all got out of the car and were shaking like a leaf. We were just thankful to be alive.
A truck driver had been following us and had witnessed the entire event. He pulled his rig in behind us and changed the tire for us. We made it to Fred’s place early the next morning, but none of us will ever forget the scary experience we shared on I-70 that night.
I am a little ashamed to mention that none of my cars have suffered from “over maintenance.” I simply get in them, gas them up and drive them. My wife would “rat me out” and tell you my habits haven’t changed much over the past 40 years.
It is very possible that this blow out could have been avoided if only I had taken the time to make sure all of the tires were properly inflated before we hit the road.
What is even more horrifying is that my parents never knew of either one of those incidents. It just makes me wonder as a parent what harrowing experiences my kids have kept secret from me all these years.
You’re right! I probably don’t want to know!
