Above the Fray in a Corvair

Here's a question: Can a stock 1964 Corvair be every bit as safe, comfortable, and reliable as 2006 car?

Having just completed a jaunt from the counrty into the wilds of the city traffic in and around an area known as 'New Tampa', replete with monster SUVs, distracted soccer mommies and desperately late Yuppies on cellphones, I began to consider what I had just done and how I had done it in my 1964 Corvair convertible.

With no more pressing business than returning a book to the library, I quickly got into the mindset that I was driving something special in a challenging environment. No way could the designers of the Corvair have anticipated the madness that exists on a big city's highways. But, those designers had provided me with a capable, workable and safe-for-its-time automobile. It would stay that way if I just drove it the same way I drove its sisters 43 years back.

I didn't rush up to stoplights, jamming on the brakes in such a way as to stop within millimeters of the bumper in front. No, brakes applied in plenty of time for a gentle stop with at least a half carlength from the car in front. We stayed pretty much at the speed limit and pretty much in the same (right) lane. Admittedly, I didn't waste time getting off the line at stoplights when all was clear in front, not to show off, but because this is how the car likes to be driven -- with some authority.

When the lady in the giant SUV tried to pull around me in a left-turn media turnoff all she got was a quizzical look and not one inch of space. I knew where my natural line was, so did the Corvair, and we took it. When she again tried the same stunt, this time inside the library parking lot, we followed the same strategy. For some reason she ended up with two wheels over the curb in a fire lane. Miz Corvair and I wondered about this, but it was a fleeting wonderment. We were back on the highway, riding with traffic, keeping to our lane and just makin' time down the road. Despite the fact we were in the 21st century, on a 21st century highway, we conducted ourselves just as we would have had it been 1964 and it felt just right.

It reminded me of the guy who sells ice cream at car shows. He has an off-and-on ignition gas engine that turns the ice cream freezer via a wide leather belt. The engine knows its job and does it well. It doesn't know or care that it's obsolete as a machine -- the task it has is not obsolete, so it just does its job without complaint.. Same with the Corvair. Driven within her limits and with a supreme distain of highway flotsam and jetsam around her she does her job and we're both happy. Isn't that what life is all about?
Arjay