they weren’t really any less safe than any other car of the period. The issue with the Corvair was in how it handled once you got yourself in trouble (i.e. driving faster than you should.) Most cars, when pushed past their handling limit, will “understeer.” Meaning, the car can’t corner as fast as you’re trying to make it, which overcomes the grip of the front tires making them scrub along the road surface.
The Corvair, being rear-engined, had a rearward weight bias. This- along with the swing-axle rear suspension- meant that if you pushed it past its limit it could snap “oversteer.” Meaning the rear tires lose traction and the arse end of the car swings around (you spin out.)
It wasn’t like Corvairs were all spinning out of control constantly; it was only when the driver went past the cars’ handling limits (which is something that really shouldn’t happen on public roads.) But Ralph Nader saw a chance to make a name for himself and now we have people who have never even seen a Corvair in person calling them “unsafe at any speed.”
Funny how Nader didn’t go after the Porsche 911 which had the exact same characteristics as the Corvair. Namely rearward weight bias, a swing axle rear suspension, and the same tendency to snap oversteer.
It seems like the Koreans did in less than a decade what it took the Japanese 25 years or so to do – and maybe even more. I have never owned a Korean car, but I greatly appreciate how quickly they were able to go from “lackluster cheap econobox” to competing with German luxury cars.
We recently sold my wife’s Jeep Grand Cherokee and bought a VW Jetta Sportwagen TDI (a diesel-powered wagon). Wagons aren’t for everyone, sure, but it can hold the amount of stuff we need for a big family road trip and manage to get twice the fuel mileage of the SUV, while offering superior handling and comfort. It’s not quite as fun as my daily driver, but it’s quick and comfortable enough that among vehicles that can carry a family and a bunch of luggage comfortably, I’ll take the wagon over an SUV any day of the week.
I’ve driven other mini-cars and three-wheelers and I would again. Even the Reliant Robin Top Gear UK makes such great fun of. But that Isetta made you feel like you were sitting on the front bumper and about to die at a moments notice. I made it 11 miles ---- under protest and well paid ---- because the owner wanted to show it at a car meet and wouldn’t drive it himself!
Hey, **jz78817 **, Corvairs only had swing axles through '64. '65-69 models had fully independent rear suspensions. Porsche 911s never had swing axles, but their predecessor models did. Corvairs did have turbos long before Porsche!
There are loads of cars I’d never buy or deliberately rent.
But there are none that strike me as SO dangerous that I’d never get into one, if someone were offering me a ride, or if it were offered to me as a 2-day loaner from my mechanic.
I love wagons and really wish there was more on offer in N.America. One of my dream cars when I was in my teens was either a Volvo 740 turbo Sportwagon or a E-Type Jag and I had much more likelihood of getting the Volvo. I’d still like to.
We had a '62 Corvair when I was in high school. It really wasn’t all that unsafe, mainly because it broke down so often, it wasn’t on the road that much.
And contrary to its reputation, the best car I ever owned is my '01 PT Cruiser. It meets my needs regarding rear area, and needs minimal repairs. The only downside is I have to get out and push when the AC is on.
Volkswagen Thing - Cheaply made car that never felt safe to ride in when I was a kid. Nissan Versa - Cheaply made car that gets TERRIBLE gas mileage , despite being a 4 cylinder. Any model of GM Saturn - Cheaply made vehicle that has so much road noise that you can barely hear the radio.
I will need a different car in a few years and a Yugo, even fully restored, will probably not be very high on my list. Those pieces of crap were Soviet engineering at its finest and you were lucky to get a few thousand miles out of one before something big broke. The body would decompose right before your eyes. There are probably a lot of Soviet era cars that I would not want to ride in or drive but you don’t ever see them in the U.S. The Yugo was the one true crossover.
I have never ridden in a SMART car and I doubt that I ever will because everything I read about them is generally bad. Their gas mileage is pretty terrible given their size and power but you won’t have much energy to contemplate that when you are focusing on the poor handling and not getting creamed by a semi when you attempt to merge onto an interstate highway.
The only supposedly non-crappy vehicles that I have ever disliked driving were actual Jeeps (as in the Wrangler all the way down to their older true Jeep models). Friends had them when I was growing up and they are fun for off-road use but not fun for regular driving. I got one as a rental car a few years ago as a free ‘upgrade’ and almost went back to trade it for a better car - any other car. I was doing all high speed city driving and it was like driving a beach ball during a windstorm. It was a miracle I didn’t side-swipe somebody because the steering wheel only gave the Jeep suggestions and not commands as far as I could tell. Everything about the handling and cabin comfort was sloppy and shoddy. Never again.
actually it was Italian engineering. It started out as a derivative of the FIAT 127, built under license by Zastava and sold in then-Yugoslavia as the Koral. Malcolm Bricklin had the bright idea to try to sell them here as a bargain-priced car. The really bad ones were from when Yugoslavia was breaking apart, cars were basically slapped together and sent out the door. Bricklin had several hare-brained get-rich schemes in the automotive industry. In the '70s he had the SV-1 made, which was just a howler. Then the Yugo debacle. And a few years ago he was going to import Chery-brand cars from China and try to sell the incredible pieces of junk here.
I know. Ten or more years ago they were at the bottom of Consumer Reports’ reliabiltiy measures. Now many, but not all, models are near the top. I just don’t like them. They don’t seem as solid as most Japanese or American cars, and even the Tiburon-type ones are meh. I do realize this is opinion.
Italian as said, and even then it wouldn’t have been Soviet. The Yugo was from 1980 on in production. Yugoslavia, despite being Communist, had their own Cold War against the USSR, from 1948 to the fall. It was more personal (Stalin was a shit) than ideological. This doesn’t mean that goods/technologies weren’t exchanged, but I don’t think the Yugo was one of these.
You learn some useful trivia on the SDMB. Still, that was one crappy car. To all of you younger Dopers out there, the Yugo was about the shittiest automobile ever sold in the U.S. but it was cheap (only a few thousand dollars even in the late 1980’s). Predictably, they all started to fall part as soon as they were sold. They made a Ford Fiesta or a Chevy Chevette seem like a luxurious ride in comaprison. I never rode in one but people used to bring them into the supermarket where I worked in high school. It wasn’t the fact that they packed 5 really poor people into an oversized riding lawnmower that made me disrespect them. It was the fact that parts fell off in the parking lot and I had to use my own jumper cables to help them get back home more than once.
I hear that you can have done much worse than that though. Some of the former Soviet Blok countries including East Germany produced some horrible examples of vehicles that were missing key features.
The worst because they didn’t sell Ladas in the US. Okay, I have no idea about the comparative awfulness.
I remember a story about someone taking a ride with a Russian guy. The door handle tore out upon opening it. There were some translation error conversations before the first person realized, he didn’t mean it was “my car that I newly got” but “my brand new car.” I assume that “any car” was better than he was used to.
