I like the rear engine analogy. Difference between the Beetle and the
Corvair seems to have been that the Beetle didn't suffer from 'ground
loops' very frequently. The Corvair was looking for them. My father owned

I live in New Hampshire, where it not only snows, but often rains on
top of the snow. I followed two gal skiers in a VW one time on the
road down from the mountains, and they began to oscillate,
overcorrect, and finally end up in the snowbank on the wrong side of
the road. I dug them out with the shovel I always carried in the front
trunk of my VW. Then, going around an extended traffic circle in
Alton, I too went off the road that same night. A plow truck pulled me
out.

3 or 4 of them. In #3, we did the classic Corvair 'ground loop' plus some.
I'm not sure to this day how many times we went around but I do know we
ended up upside down on the convertible roof. Unsafe at any speed indeed!

Driving home from Vermont in a friend's Corvair, me driving, I could
feel the front end move out from under me about every five minutes. I
was passed three times, and in every case the car that passed me wound
up in an accident a few miles farther along. In that case the Corvair
got home and they didn't, because of that early-warning system of
"black ice" on the road.

The Vdub bus seems to be immune too. Drove 3 of them in western PA snows
and never had them try to swap ends. Passed a lot of stuck people too. But
of course, they were one of the most lethal vehicles on the road. They
weren't in a lot of accidents, but you stood a good chance of buying it if
when they were.

Gosh, I had one of those, too. You're right; it never seemed to suffer
from understeer, perhaps because the passenger and the driver were
sitting on top of the front axle! As I recall the shoulder belt didn't
have an inertia reel, and if it was secured you couldn't reach the
instrument panel. So I cut mine off.

My wife and I drove to California and back, sitting out there on the
front axle, with our daughter in a basket between the two seats.
Yikes.

all the best -- Dan Ford
email: www.danford.net/letters.htm#9

see the Warbird's Forum at http://www.danford.net/index.htm
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