Junkyard Find: 1968 Chevrolet Corvair Monza Coupe
Fully three-quarters of you who took our “Ralph Nader, Angel or Demon” poll voted to give ol’ Ralph a halo instead of a pitchfork, so we don’t need to explain how his book wasn’t really the cause of the Corvair‘s plummeting sales after the initial burst of enthusiasm following the car’s release. No, most likely it was that more traditional Chevy II that did that, but the case can be made that The General kept on building Corvairs all the way into 1969 as a way of proving that Ralph Nader can’t push around (what was then) the Most Powerful Corporation In the World. In 1968, only about 15,000 Corvairs were sold, which makes this rusty Denver example fairly uncommon.
Corvairs in beat-up condition aren’t worth much these days; I know a guy near Colorado Springs with close to a hundred in project-worthy condition. He doesn’t get much interest from buyers.
Heating an air-cooled car was always a problem; getting carbon monoxide in the passenger compartment is a danger in Corvairs (and Beetles and their kin). You could get an aftermarket gasoline-fueled heater for Corvairs.
This car has a column-shifted Powerglide 2-speed automatic, not the sportier 4-speed floor-shift manual.
Restorable? Sure. Worth it? No. You can get a solid 1965-69 Monza coupe for a depressingly small fraction of the cost of fixing the rot in one like this (this yard does, however, have a ’64 Corvair Monza sedan in much nicer shape).
Clings to the road like a Siamese cat!
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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I like this revised style Corvair. Far sleeker than most cars of it's era. I'd love a final model year convertible. I hope someone saves it...the last one I saw like this had been turned into a very unfortunate looking gasser.
I don't know why people hate on the Corvair so much. I remember them as a kid and they looked kind of cool...sort of like first generation Camaro.