The history of my Corvair...

 First a correction to last evening's blog.  My west coast brother has informed me that my Corvair cannot have been a 1955 model because Corvairs were not made until 1960.  1960-69 to be exact.  After thinking it over I'm pretty sure mine was a 1961 model.  I know I bought it used in 1965 for $800.  You may remember that there was a famous book written about Corvairs and Pintos and a few other small models called "Unsafe at Any Speed" by Ralph Nader.  It was published in 1965 but I failed to read it before I made my purchase.  

The problem with Corvairs was that they tended to roll over because of the engine in the rear.  I know that this is true from personal experience.  I was driving back to Ball State one Monday morning near the end of my last summer quarter when, before I knew what happened, I had gone around a curve (possibly a little too fast)  and the car spun around and rolled over and up on it's wheels again in the middle of a harvested corn field.

Coincidentally, and blessedly, my mother had sent me money to have seat belts installed (not required) and I had that done a week before my accident. I sat there, stunned but ok except for a tiny scratch on my left knee.  I was pretty sure I wasn't going to be able to drive the car to Muncie that day, especially as I watched my windshield gently rocking in the field about 20 feet in front of the car.

I walked across the highway and knocked on a farmhouse door.  A very kind lady let me use her phone to call home.  The conversation went like this - me "Daddy I've had an accident." Dad "Are you OK?" "Yes." "That's all that matters."  You've got to love a father like that.  He came and got me, drove me the rest of the way to college, sympathetic not scolding, and then came home and dealt with the car situation.  My car was on his insurance policy at that time and the agent said we should call it a total and they would pay me $400.  My father, who had never had an accident or an insurance claim in his life thought this was not fair considering what I had paid for the car two weeks before.  They said the other option was to repair the car at no cost to us.  Daddy said "Fix it." and so they did. I drove that excellently repaired car until 1971 when, married and with our first child on the way, we traded it in on a VW bus camper conversion.  Happily I was very comfortable with rear engine cars at that point.