Here’s some rare vintage footage from General Motors with great insights into the stunning design of the 1965 Corvair.
It’s fair to say the Chevrolet Corvair has been a controversial vehicle throughout its history, and we haven’t shied away from the controversy here at Mac’s Motor City Garage. But there’s one area of the Corvair where there is no dispute at all: It’s a fabulous looking car, both in its original 1960-64 sheet metal and its second-generation 1965-69 redesign. To this day, the Corvair is regarded as one of the high points of the Bill Mitchell era at the General Motors styling studios.
Thanks to the General Motors Heritage Center, we have this awesome little film clip that provides some backstory to the design of the ’65 Corvair. As GM studio designer Bob Bartholomew explains to host Bill Barber, two familiar Chevrolet concept vehicles lent elements of their designs to the ’65 production car: the Corvair Monza Super Spyder and the Monza Super Sport.
Of course, here the experimental vehicles are called “idea cars,” since the now-universal term “concept car” was still a few years in the future. Appropriately, the scene is the styling patio at the GM Technical Center in Warren, Michigan, with the styling dome in the background directly behind them. By the way, both these experimental cars are still with us today as part of the priceless GM Heritage Collection. Video below.
I have seen the two concepts at Amelia Island and they are breathtaking. I wish they could have built them.
If you look just right, you can see the body line of the 67 Camaro in the side view of the 65 Corvair, from the windshield back. The Monza looks like an early design for the 68 Corvette. Both show how when they had a design they liked, they expended and tweaked it until they came out with an entirely new design, using a piece here and a piece there. You could tell which family a car line was in and how it improved through the years. All that seems to be lost anymore with everybody trying to design a copycat lookalike egg without actually copying someone else. Back then, cars had character and identifiable lines, you could tell one make from another, now, they are all smooth blobs that you can only tell apart if you see the nameplate on them. And if there are any character lines on them, they are abrupt slashes or acute angles that stick out instead of blending with the rest of the design. I guess that’s why new models don’t interest me anymore, seldom does a design come along that gets my attention.