In 1965, working for the GM Legal Staff, I reviewed everything critical of the Corvair written by anyone inside the company. If the plaintiffs could introduce any of that material as evidence of internal criticism, I had to prepare a rebuttal to be delivered by our designed witness. I made copies of magazine articles, reports and letters within Chevrolet and the Proving Grounds and any books on the subject of automobile handling. I paid special attention to anything critical of cars made with the engine in the rear, as was the Corvair; and to discussions of independent rear suspension, a rarity in those days, but a feature of the Corvair. I marked the copy of the rebuttal as plus (+), Minus (-) or Zero (0) to show whether I thought the article might be helpful (to us) or not helpful, or not some thing to worry about. I put copies of the papers and my rebuttals into a suitcase that given to the lawyer-engineer team that handled each lawsuit.
Well, then, why did Chevrolet put the car on the market in the fall of 1959 as a revolutionary all new car? That was the year when Detroit first responded to George Romney’s criticism of gas guzzling dinosaurs. GM, Ford and Plymouth planned to introduce small six-cylinder cars: the Corvair, the Ford Falcon and the Plymouth Valiant. There was no way that GM was going to allow those other cars to go on sale without the competition from the “poor man’s Porsche” – the Chevrolet Corvair with the rear engine. The R&D department of Chevy was already furiously trying to come up with modifications that would reduce the dangerous handling of the 1960 model currently in production. During the first year of sales, Chevy quietly made incremental changes to the rear suspension. Finally the 1964 model had major changes with no sign of the handling problem. After that, Chevrolet introduced the all-new 1965 model Corvair with handling better than the Corvette of that period. It did not have much power; it did have sharp, safe handling but it was too late. The 1964 ½ Ford Mustang outsold it. By 1968 the Corvair was finished, killed not by Nader, but by Ford.
Because I was so knowledgeable about the material that might become available to the plaintiff’s lawyers, PA assigned me to work with the Legal Staff attorney who prepared responses to interrogatories and requests for production of relevant company documents. This material was ordered, by the judge, to be copied and delivered to the opposition.
The GM lawyers also asked me to prepare material for the background use in defense of cases alleging that the design of the Corvair was responsible for the kinds of injuries peculiar to the situation when the car spins out of control and / or overturns. To prepare each case, I reviewed the details of the events -- nobody in this business calls them "accidents". In the field of analysis of motor vehicle handling, a sudden sharp maneuver -- to avoid a collision, as we say at Consumer Reports -- is a brief slide slip. Normally, an alert driver can easily correct it to regain directional control. Most cars of the day, with heavy engines in front, tended to be mildly or strongly understeering at high lateral Gs – hard cornering. That meant that, compared to a neutral or oversteering car, they had a weak response to the steering command. The Corvair, when oversteering, could spin out if it turned much sharper than the driver had intended. Spinning usually resulted in some degree of sliding sideways. That, along with the semi-swing rear axle, frequently led to an overturn event, also called a roll-over. This is no questioning that spinning out or capsizing is much more dangerous than hitting something with the front end of the car.
NEXT: Ralph Nader’s Book
No comments:
Post a Comment