Unsafe At Any Speed, Really?

In his lifetime, as far as I know Dad purchased only one new car. As luck would have it, it was a Corvair, the car made infamous by that consumer watchdog rascal, Ralph Nader. I remember the day Dad drove that beautiful white vehicle down our lane. We waited on the front porch while he parked it, then we ran like lemmings to examine it.

           

What I recall most is the delicious new-car aroma. Although I can’t stand the smell of plastic in new cars of today, in 1960 the fragrance was more exhilarating than toxic. The gray seats were as slick as a toboggan run, and everything was perfect. The radio worked, the windshield had no cracks, and with a minimum amount of effort the windows cranked up and down. According to a March 8 entry in an old diary, I was even impressed by the heater that actually threw out heat. 

           

We all piled in and went for a ride, but there was no stopping for ice cream cones or hamburgers. Mom declared eating in the car was absolutely forbidden. My siblings and I agreed, knowing perfectly well that rule wouldn’t last longer than a week.

Mom didn’t have a driver’s license, but such a minor snag didn’t hinder her from driving our old car to the mailbox at the end of the sideroad. Once she mastered the Corvair’s stick shift, there was no stopping her. She never ventured to the Soo, but she was no stranger to Six Mile Road as she zoomed to Jaeger’s grocery store in Brimley. Well, maybe zoomed is taking poetic license. I’m sure Mom crept along, keeping a sharp eye out for the sheriff.

If I remember correctly, we didn’t have that fancy Corvair very long. I rechecked my diary to see if I could find when and why the vehicle vanished, but no such event was worthy of an entry. If my sister was still with us, she could have given me chapter and verse on every detail regarding that car. Jude had an amazing memory and a phenomenal eye for detail. She passed away a year ago and although her gift of gab often drove me crazy, she was a trivia encyclopedia. As it is, the Corvair experiment is dependent upon my pencil scribbles and a story I wrote years ago.

Two lines read like this: “I run my hands along the Corvair’s body and for the first time ever, I’m not afraid of getting cut on rust. The car drives like a team of fresh horses pulling together.”

Nader might have been right about safety, but he didn’t know a thing about a kid’s delight in a new car.