CorvairJim

Gotta love a "Batwing Chevy"! These cars have so much more character than the '59 and '60 Fords. Make mine a 348-powered Kingswood wagon, if you please. Ron, the keyhole is hiding behind the Chevy emblem of this very real 1959 Chevrolet Impala Sport Sedan. That license plate is the one that Chevy used on it's publicity shots of all it's cars in '59. Yes, Harry, she be REAL!

You are doing some spectacular work on this Chevelle! I'll be ordering a couple of them, especially if the various versions are available. As I said earlier in the thread, I once owned a '73 Laguna wagon, so please consider a wagon version once the coupe is finished. Then maybe an El Camino too... Two different noses, and the grilles were different between the 1973 and '74 too. The Laguna had round signal lights and no badge in 1973, while in '74 it had squared-off signal lights and the "Laguna Type S-3" badge in the middle.

Pretty much self-explanitory. I build different sorts of car models, but I keep coming back to my one true automotive love - Corvairs. I've owned more than a dozen of them at one time or another since 1980. My most recent one, sold due to financial problems brought on by the Obama current recession, was a 1966 Monza coupe that put over 220 h.p. to the rear wheels. I would never do any street racing (Not me! I'm much too safety-concious to do anything so blatantly illegal as that ), but if I were to have done so, I would have been 13-0 against 5.0 Mustangs with that car. 14-0 if you count the time I let a friend of mine drive the car...

1965 was a great year for Chevy. My first car was a '65 Chevy II, my first Corvair was a '65 Monza (Dark Green/Fawn!), and your model shows that the big guys were pretty doggone sharp too!

I'm involved in about 4 CBPs at the moment, so they all take their turns on the bench. My Fury wagon is moving along, but I'm not getting it finished as quickly as I thought I would. The deadline is still a ways off, so I'll be at the starting line with it when race day arrives with a full tank of Premium and a few boxes of provisions for my 3-man crew, don't worry about that!

After seeing the video Skip posted, I WANT ONE!

When I read Ian's quote, I thought there's no possible way that could be done. Then I realized that, with the Corvair's seperate 2-piece crankcase, it COULD be done, but it would be a lot of work and, really, for what reason? Then I read Chuck's comment... WITH A LINK TO ONE THAT HAS ALREADY BEEN BUILT! - and had to go check it out. Man, that's one impressive engine with the triple Webers! You know, I think Ian's right... Maybe I DO want to try one of those! I'd still have to figure out what to put it in, since I'm not into rat rods. Hmmm... Maybe if I could scrounge up one of those resin Motorama Corvair transkits that was available a while back, that would be an appropriate home for it...

Looks like a nice smoooooth paint job - You haven't lost your touch! Keep us posted with your progress.

... But could a FORD pickup carry a CHEVY like that? Didn't think so! (But then a Chevy wouldn't need to be carried like that either, since it wouldn't be broken down in the first place!) FORD= Frequently On Rollback Deck

Ask, and ye shall receive! How about one with a 4-71 style blower? I'm building a similar setup for a ficticious 1960's-style Corvair dragster model for the Vintage Racing CBP: If you have any questions regarding Corvair engines, you know where to find me!

Welcome back, Dave! I've been hoping this build wouldn't die off completely, since it seemed to get off to such a great start last year. I think there are only maybe half a dozen builds completed so far. I'm really looking forward to seeing what you do with your Microbus (I hope you have a source for plenty of "Flower Power" and peace sign decals!). On an ironic side note, just yesterday I saw an early 70's-style Microbus Westfalia pulled over by the local police - for what I don't know...

There are lots of pics of Corvair engines available online. And if you asked me real nice-like, I could probably scare up a Corvair engine to send your way. After all, what are friends for? I always like to see more Corvair models (and as in this case, Corvair-powered models) on here.

Hey, easy there, Chuck! I'm a "Six-Banger Nutjob" too... I just prefer mine to be air-cooled and horizontally-opposed!

Mid-engine, V-8 powered Corvairs (popularly known as "Corv-8's" in the Corvair hobby) are a fairly common conversion, generally using a small block Chevy hooked up to the standard 1966-69 Corvair 4-speed transaxle. Conversion kits were available from both Crown Engineering and an outfit you VW fans have probably heard of: Kelmark. That gearbox was basically just a Borg-Warner T-10 in a different case so it was plenty strong enough to handle a V-8 that was anything even close to streetable. I've seen V-8's mounted in custom frames in the front of other Corvairs too, as well as aluminum Buick 215's (which are actually LIGHTER than the Corvair flat-6!) mounted out back. The most outrageous ones I've seen were Toronado-based conversions, with Olds 455's and the Toro automatic transaxle used as a unit with shorter-than-stock jalfshafts. A few years ago at a Corvair Society of America National Convention, a former Cadillac engineer showed up with his latest build: A Corvair with a full-on Cadillac Northstar drivetrain/front subframe mounted where the back seat used to be. Instead of shortening the halfshafts and screwing with the drivetrain's suspension geometry, he just widened the quarter panels about 8" per side! Not only did that car perform, but it looked downright awesome doing it! I used that car's modified bodywork as the inspiration for a model I'm building for the "Gumball Rally" CBP.

If I didn't have so many irons in the fire already as far as CBP's go, I'd consider jumping into this one with the 1955 Chevy El Camilo project that I've had back-burnered for a few years. My line of thought on having a six in the proto-Elky is that it would have been marketed primarily as a niche vehicle for in-town boutique-type shops and high-rent suburban landscaping businesses, very much like the sedan delivery was aimed at florists and the like. Back in the day, most sedan deliveries had sixes, not V-8's. I might still do it, since there's that "Car To Pickup" CBP that's going on at the moment too. I already have one build committed for that one, a '57 Chrysler, with another possibility, a '69 Corvair.

... Not to mention licking your mixers!

Great save on one seriously run-down toy! In my opinion, you took a toy and made a model out of it. I have roughly half a dozen Bandai tin, friction-powered Corvairs along with a few other brands. My 'Vairs are roughly 1:20 scale. I haven't done any restoration work on any of mine since they're all fairly presentable originals as they sit. (And they're all in different colors!) On a similar note, I have restored a Structo Corvair Rampside pickup in the closest thing I could find to it's original deep red metallic color. All I need to find for it as a set of reproduction decals. They're available for a few other Structo toys but not the Rampside.

I did much the same thing back in the early 1980's. I bought a rebuilt Corvair engine cheap from a guy who was leaving the hobby to get into Corvettes, and we picked the thing up without the aid of a lift or engine hoist and put it in the trunk of my 1976 Buick LeSabre. When I got home, I enlisted the aid of a neighbor to take it back out again. The thing was not light at about 300 lbs, but we were all pretty big guys so we didn't really have any trouble with it. In and of itself it wasn't really a problem and besides, that engine was already used to riding in the back! On a side note, when I used to display my '66 Corvair Monza ( the car was NOT "show quality"), I'd have the trunk open. When some youngster would ask where the engine was, I'd feign shock and exclaim, "I wonder where it went"? Then I'd take them around back, lift the engine lid, and say "It's a good thing I always carry a spare one in the trunk"!

The heck with the radiator! Where would you put it where it wouldn't spoil the car's lines? Besides, a Corvair engine can make ANY project more cool!

This beauty might just inspire me to get cracking on my full-custom '51 Chevy fastback again... after about 10 years of having it sitting around in a box! The 1950's were THE era for custom cars, before the wretched excesses of the "Show Rods" in the 1960's.

Great job on the model, and great photos too! the only thing that told me that it wasn't a 1:1 car was the typeface on the license plate. It's that good.

It's out there, guys. I got it. (It's REALLY out there! )

In looking more closely at the original photo, I can see that it IS the Bentley "Winged B" ornament, not the "Spirit of Ecstacy" on the radiator grille of this magnificent Bentley Continental. Harry, I wasn't accusing you of altering anything, it's just that the background looked too pristine to be anything but retouched. My brother-in-law is a professional automotive photographer, and he's told me about many of the techniques that go into perfecting these photos before they're ever published. My guess is that the original photographer and his crew did the work fine-tuning the photo (lighting and shadows, etc) already. These guys don't alter the substance of the car; they just try to show it to greatest advantage.

I'm in for one too. Any chance of a Laguna-style nose on it? (I once had a '73 Laguna wagon, so I'm partial to that style.)

Great vintage drag Elky! I just wish I'd remembered that column-mounted tach was in this kit when I was finishing up my super stock Dodge 330 a couple of months back. I have a couple of these on the shelf...