Unsafe at any speed!

I drove a Corvair and lived to tell the tale.

By Trish Boppert

Aug 23, 2000 | It's summertime and the open road calls.

My friend just bought a new car and while that new-car smell truly is vaguely narcotic, it does not interest me. Sure, new cars are great, and lucky are the drivers who trade in their old wheels for a new model every 2.5 years. I am not one of those lucky drivers.

My first car was a Corvair, the very vehicle that made Ralph Nader famous as the subject of his book "Unsafe at Any Speed!" Just as bittersweet memories of the shiny newness of first love cast a long shadow, my relationships with post-Corvair vehicles have never provided quite the pure adrenaline rush I experienced with Her. But let's start, as everything must, at the beginning.

I love to drive.

My romance with the road was no doubt forged by the epic vacation journeys of my childhood, with six kids and two adults crammed into a wood-paneled Country Squire wagon. The lucky ones would luxuriate on the mattresses and pillows my father used to line the "way back" in the futile hope that his quarrelsome offspring would be lulled into a nearly catatonic state for the entire journey.

No such luck. One of my father's favorite lines was: "This is MY vacation, DAMN IT!" All of my father's rants were delivered at full bellow, in a vain attempt to stem the rising tide of pinching, teasing, hitting and general mayhem resulting from six kids and, say, five hours of scaling treacherous mountain inclines in near-monsoon conditions.

And look, Ma! No seat belts! Nobody used 'em back in the good old/bad old days. The miracle is that we're all still alive to tell the tale.

What's even more remarkable is that I survived my '65 Corvair -- unsafe at any speed, two doors, three speeds, engine in the back and nothing up front but a trunk with a cinder block in it.

My Corvair was a hand-me-down from a cousin whose indifference to the car -- and her reluctance to drive it -- kept it preserved in almost pristine condition. I was 17 on the day I first laid eyes on her jaunty lines and caressed her bare metal steering wheel.

I was not indifferent. I was not reluctant. I was immediately smitten.

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