Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire 1966 Corvair Corsa Turbo

That car gets better looking with age.

I agree

Good friend had a maroon one when I was in high school - bout all I remember was it was a 6 cylinder with 6 carbs. Very quick little car, lots of fun. He was 6'4" and weighed about 230, so it fit him like a glove - but he liked it better than the Mustang he had before it.

I REALLY enjoyed driving that car!

Mike Holmes

Growing up, we had one of the first body style, a 1961 I think. It was blue, but I can't recall whether it had 4 doors or 2 doors...probably four. My dad liked it because it got pretty good fuel economy, but he traded it in for a 1963 Galaxy 500. When men were men and cars were steel!

My grandmother had a black Monza of the second body style, I think it was a '63 but maybe a '64. It had a little lever on the dash that controlled the auto trans. My uncle had just turned 16 and pretty much trashed that car in short order.

In the early 80s around El Paso, dune buggies and sand rails were a big thing because we had many thousands of acres of unfenced desert with varied topography to run around on. My uncle bought a trashed out sand rail of the type normally powered with a VW 4-banger and rebuilt it and bolted a Corvair 6-banger in it (you had to adapt them because the engines turned in opposite directions). I'm not sure which engine it was but I think it may have originally been a 164 hp motor, which got hopped up a bit. Talk about something quick!

I had one of those, same year. It was a great car although it was high miles when I got it. I only had it for a couple of years before it got too expensive to keep running. It needed a new engine, clutch, and other stuff. Those big cars of that time were great on the highway...when gas cost .25.

My 65 Corsa 140
(I wish I still owned it)
This was my second car that I did all the body work on. I had it professonaly painted, they did a little work, to tidy it up before paint.

Friend had a Corvair in the early 1970’s (not sure what stripe it was), it did catch on fire

I had a 65' Corsa for a little while in HS., sporty cars.

I had a friend in high school and his dad was a big Corsair enthusiast. None of them had a turbo.

As I recall, he had four of them. He also had an old school Jaguar XKE.

My buddy inherited one of the Corvair's as his first car.

I had an old Corvair van for a short while. It was ancient when I bought it and it overheated easily. It broke down on me one day when I was going to work. I coaxed it into an apartment parking lot and abandoned it there. It eventually disappeared.

For a year afterwards my only transportation was a 650 Norton N-15. Strangly enough, the old Norton is still running. I stumbled across it on Facebook Marketplace a while back.

It's still there. I put the Mikuni conversion on it back in '79. It also has a kickstarter off of an 850 Commando. I broke the original kickstarter. I looked like a mutant when I owned that Norton. My right leg was muscled up much more than my left from kickstarting that thing. My next motorcycle was a '77 Harley XLCR which had an electric start--quite a luxury after 3 years of kickstarting a 650 Norton to life.

https://www.facebook.com/marketplac...l_code=null&referral_story_type=post

Pretty good off road too.

I suspect someone who really knew what they were doing could employ some of the newer dual-compressor wheel turbo tech to ease or mostly eliminate the turbo lag and have a real sleeper-screamer.

Leno said there is a huge aftermarket for these motors , as someone mentioned earlier, dune buggy, etc keep demand up

you can get Fuel Injection , 4 wheel disc brakes, I'm certain there would be turbo upgrades as well.

These are excellent cars and I had several in the 1970s and 80s - some were daily drivers and all were very dependable. Easy to maintain and repair and that engine seemed indestructible - never wore one out. Mostly just needed to replace seals on the ends of the valve tubes - and improved materials (Viton?) fixed that issue. Transaxle setup was tough and very good.

Mine were all 65 and later - second and much more elegant body style. I had only the two door coupes and convertibles - a total of six over time. The 4 door looked stodgy to me, so stayed away from those. Had only one with the auto trans - early on - handy shifting, but a mush bucket and avoided thereafter. I found them to be very good at autocross. Routinely loaded a bag of sand in the front compartment to help with oversteer and soon learned to put a good tensioner on the convoluted fan/gen belt.

Had all three carb/horsepower versions and liked the 140 hp setup the best in terms of feasibility with power. Had two turbo Corsa models with 4 speed stick and they were very, very quick - surprised a bunch of braggarts who had no idea - cleaned out a lot of those on Fri and Sat evenings. Lube issue with that turbo setup could be a challenge.

My wife put over 80k miles on her vanilla 2 carb 67 coupe, and loved it. Always wanted one of the Corvair HCF pickups with the side loading ramp - and still do - but got way into the 67 to 72 Chev/GMC trucks. Maybe I can still find one.

Nice thread - thanks.

During the Nadar witch hunt there was an article on a Corvair auto cross car that was quick. Other than the usual mods, there were limit straps on the a-arms to keep it from rolling the inside wheels under in high g turns. Seemed to work well.

I had a 63 bottom of the line 4 door going to college. It was cheap to run and always ran. Problem was the gas heater. Would work maybe 10% of the time and fill the inside with fumes. Darn near froze to death going back to Ft Collins for school and never could get the heater started.

Buddies VW bus had one of those gas heaters, sounded like a jet engine and fear of lighting it kept you warm.

In high school a friend had a Spyder, turbo, IIRC a '64. It was pretty quick. I'm thinking 185 hsp. Almost got killed in it one day when we were out shooting woodchucks after school. Cranking down the 1 1/2 lane blacktop along the river we hit a small curve after cresting a small rise just fast enough to unweight the rear end....holy shcitt! Fortunately, learning to drive in that region one of the primary skills you acquire is controlling a skid. Young reflexes and fast hands on the wheel and after a couple of probably over 90 degree oscillations he had it straightened out and down the road we continued.

We took that car down to Syracuse (120 mile expedition, big deal for high school kids in those days) one day with a couple of girlfriends. On the way home it started overheating. We pulled over to the side of interstate 81, under a bridge to discover the fan belt was broken. One of the girls was wearing those new-fangled (at the time) pantyhose which we appropriated to fill in for the fan belt and that got us the remaining 50 miles home.

Another friend had one which I got to drive quite a bit. I don't remember the year, but it was white and had, IIRC, 145 or 150 hsp, 3 speed on the floor. It was a fun little car to drive. I hated to see him get rid of it for a big, white Pontiac or Olds convertible with (iirc) a 421 cu in V-8.

My dad never fully got over being required by law to wear a seatbelt.

Those shown here are sharp cars. I always thought so. See one once in a while for sale but it’s usually the older ugly models.. maybe I can find one for my grandson and keep it nice. Should be a novelty by the time he is a teenager. EdK

I had a 180 HP turbo when I was in HS was pretty ratty back then about 72 would eat the turbo bearings and had a head issue.