Cars and bikes I’ve come across in my travels

A few more shots from the ‘ferry’....
 

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And a few more so you don’t have to spend so much time on your visit.
 

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They used to say all that weight hanging out the back of Porsches compromised the handling, just imagine a cast-iron V8 hanging out the back.
 
I,m unfamiliar with Corvair engines, but the inlet manifold on the buggy motor only appears to be feeding two ports rather than three. Although the distributor appears like it has six outputs. Got any more pics?
No, but this might fill in some of the blanks, Baz.
And here's a Corvair powered buggy in action:
 
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Corvairs used a GM-built all-aluminum, air-cooled flat-6. The engines were fine it was the rest of the car that were absolute crap.
I strongly beg to differ! The Corvair was criticized for it handling, but the first generation had swing axles in the rear, just like the world’s most popular car: the VW Beetle. The second generation had a fully independent rear suspension and some of the cleanest styling of any GM car of the era. All of the handling issues from the swing axles were fixed by the time the 1964 model was released and for 1965 the suspension was completely redesigned along the lines of the Corvette anyway.

If it were not for Ralph Nader and his book Unsafe at Any Speed the Corvair development would have continued and the car could have rivaled another famous rear engined six cylinder car. The Yenko Stinger showed what was possible by a private tuner. His version made 250 hp from 2.7 litres and the factory turbocharged engine made 150hp and 315 nm. This was the second mass produced turbocharged engine.

1965/6 was a high water mark for GM styling with the introduction of the 2nd generation Chevelle and the 2nd generation Corvair. Both crisp clean, no frills designs.
 
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The Corvair was an interesting departure from conventional US car design. There are still a lot of Corvair enthusiasts around. If I lived in USA I'd be one of them.

I reckon the designers took a long, hard look at the VW beetle, and figured they could build on the same concept to create a better car, and I think they succeeded. It deserved a longer life and development than it got. Its demise was largely thanks to Nader's criticism of one component that was subsequently replaced, as explained by Alzero above.

The engine architecture is very much along the lines of a VW boxer, but with 2 more cylinders: Vertically split alloy crankcase, separate cylinders, held on by a one piece head each side with studs into the crankcase. Gear driven camshaft below the crankshaft. Pushrods via separate tubes below the cylinders, etc.

As they're air cooled, they were (and probably still are) a popular choice to convert into aircraft engines. Just as VW engines are.
 
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