Welcome to the home page of the Saginaw Valley Corvair Club, better known as the Rear Engine Rebels. I'm Melvin McCollom, club president for the last six years. I retired in 1996 after thirty-four years at an auto plant here in Saginaw, and I bought my first Corvair new off the lot in 1962, a Monza coupe, silver blue, and I still have it. I also have a '61 Rampside that is mostly a parts truck and a '65 Corsa turbo convertible that has been "almost done" since 1991. My wife Marylou says I don't have a hobby, I have a condition.

The club started in 1978, when five of us got together in Danny Kozak's garage because we were tired of being the only guy at the cruise night whose engine was in the trunk. Danny still comes to every meeting, and he still has the 1960 Corvair 700 he bought new. The name came later. Patricia Torrey's late husband called us the Rear Engine Rebels at a car show in 1981, and it stuck better than "Saginaw Valley Corvair Club," which is still our name on the bank account.

Today we're 31 members with 44 Corvairs: 23 first-generation cars (1960-64) and 21 second-generation (1965-69), including 10 convertibles, 7 trucks and vans, and 5 turbos. They range from show-winners to daily drivers to a Loadside that has been in William Kimmons' barn since Carter was president. Every one of them counts. See them all on the Members' Cars page.

Most of us also belong to CORSA, the national Corvair Society of America, but you don't have to. You don't even have to own a Corvair. You just have to like them, or be willing to learn.

We meet the third Tuesday of every month at 7:30 p.m. at the Kessel Township Hall. Coffee is on at 7:00. Bring your car if the weather's decent and park it out front where people can see it. Dues are $15 a year per household, which gets you our monthly newsletter, The Rear View, and a vote on where the color tour goes.

Our 19th annual tour. We meet in the Township Hall lot at 8:30 a.m. and pull out at 9:00 sharp, north out of the Valley on the two-lane roads to the AuSable River country, lunch at a family restaurant on the Lake Huron shore, and back by way of the back roads in time for supper. About 220 miles all told. Terry Bontrager leads in his Greenbrier, and Ira Imes runs sweep at the back with a toolbox and a tow strap.

Before you go:

• Full tank, oil checked, tires at the right pressure. On a Corvair that means less in front than in back. If you don't know the numbers for your car, ask, and somebody will tell you at length.
• Carry a spare fan belt. The Corvair's belt makes two quarter turns to get from the crankshaft to the cooling fan on top of the engine, and when one lets go, you're done until you put on another. Every Corvair owner learns this once. We'd rather you learned it here.
• CB radios on channel 14 if you have one.
• Convertibles: top down if it's over 50 degrees. That's the rule. We don't make the rule.

Last year we had 23 Corvairs on the road and one thrown fan belt (not mine). Let's see if we can make it 25 and none.

The big one. Corvair parts, Corvair literature, Corvair everything, indoors and heated, in the poultry building at the county fairgrounds, 8:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. Admission $2. Vendor tables are $10 ($8 for members), and last year we sold 41 of them to people from four states and Ontario. If you're looking for a Spyder dash, a Greenbrier door hinge, a set of Corsa gauges or a good used Powerglide, this is where it will be.

We need volunteers for setup on Friday night, the door, and the lunch counter (Marylou's sloppy joes are famous in three counties). Sign up at the September or October meeting. All money goes to the club, and the club gives $300 of it every year to the high school auto shop program.

Every time I park my Monza at a gas station, somebody walks over and says "Isn't that the car Ralph Nader...?" Yes. Yes it is. Pull up a chair.

The car. Chevrolet built the Corvair for the 1960 through 1969 model years. The engine is in the back, and it's air-cooled: a horizontally opposed six, a "flat six," built mostly of aluminum, with a big fan on top instead of a radiator. No radiator, no antifreeze, no water pump, no boiling over in traffic. Nothing else made in Detroit was built like it.

The first generation, 1960 to 1964. The 500 and 700 were the plain cars, and the Monza was the sporty one, with bucket seats and nicer trim. The Monza Spyder (1962 through 1964) came with a turbocharger, which in 1962 almost nobody had ever heard of on a car you could buy. There was the Lakewood station wagon, and a whole line of trucks and vans with the engine in the back, too: the Greenbrier van, the Corvan, the Loadside pickup, and the Rampside, a pickup with a ramp that folds down from the side of the bed so you can roll things right in.

The second generation, 1965 to 1969. All new, and one of the best-looking cars of the '60s, and I'm not the only one who says so. The '65 had a new fully independent rear suspension. The top of the line was the Corsa (1965 and 1966), with a four-carburetor engine or a turbo. After '66 there was just the 500 and the Monza, and fewer every year, and the last Corvair was built in 1969.

The book. In 1965 a young lawyer named Ralph Nader published Unsafe at Any Speed, a book about auto safety. The first chapter went after the early Corvair, the 1960 through 1963 cars, and their swing-axle rear suspension, which he said could let the rear end tuck under and the car spin out in a hard turn. The book made him famous, and it made the Corvair the car everybody's brother-in-law has an opinion about.

Here's what the brother-in-law doesn't know. The '64 already had a new rear spring setup that helped the handling, and by the time the book came out, the redesigned '65, with its new rear suspension, was already in the showrooms. And in 1972, the federal government's own highway safety people tested the 1960-63 Corvair against other cars of its day and found that its handling was no worse than theirs.

That doesn't mean you drive one like a new car. Keep the tire pressures right, keep the suspension in shape, and respect a car that's pushing forty the way you'd respect anything that's pushing forty. I've been driving Corvairs for thirty-seven years. The only thing that's come close to doing me in is Marylou's brother's chili.

President: Melvin McCollom ('62 Monza coupe)
Vice President: Terry Bontrager ('63 Greenbrier)
Secretary and newsletter: Patricia Torrey ('62 Monza convertible)
Treasurer: Malcolm Payne ('62 Monza Spyder)
Swap Meet Chairman: Thomas Dorfman (three of them, ask him)
Tech Advisor: Carroll Slaton ('67 Monza convertible)