I am sure you remember Prince’s “Little Red Corvair.” I had one.
Okay, I know he did not sing about my Chevrolet Corvair or anyone else’s. But, if he had ever owned one, he might have written a different song.
My red Corvair was my first car. It was well used (worn) and had been driven by my mother for a while. I do not recall the year model.
I had it all ready to go when I turned 16 in the summer of 1970 and received my drivers license. In those days, Texas let us highly responsible 16-year-olds drive all we wanted, with whomever we wanted and whenever and wherever we wanted. Officially, there were laws about how we drove, but my red beauty was too slow to get into much trouble, although I still managed to run into trouble. I will get to that soon.
My red Corvair had it all. Four doors, an automatic transmission with a tiny lever on the red dashboard to change gears, red vinyl bucket seats, a sprayed on “black vinyl top,” and an air-cooled engine in the rear with a fan belt that popped off too often. I added a Craig 8-track tape player under the dash to complement the AM/FM radio.
The tape player disappeared one night when I parked my little ‘Vair” in front of my family’s home. The police called me months later after finding it and many others that had been stolen. I retrieved it, re-installed it, but ended up with nothing to play in it when someone came along later and stole my tapes, but left the player.
The first time I put the Corvair on the road was the day after I turned 16. After driving only a few miles in my hometown, I had a meeting alongside a street with two City of Tyler police officers. Two things happened. First, I “failed to yield properly” at a busy intersection and nearly had a wreck. Secondly, the police saw the error of my ways.
So, as I pulled up to a home to pick up a friend, the police pulled in right behind me. And, yes, my friend and her parents looked out the windows to see what was going on. Oh, by the way, her dad’s brother was our county sheriff.
I ran into a good cop/bad cop scene. The older officer wanted to give me a ticket. The much younger officer wanted to give me a break, considering I had just celebrated a milestone birthday and all. The good news is I got only a warning ticket and my friend’s parents let her go for a ride in my car. Five years later, my wife, Candace, and I rented a garage apartment behind that same family for a summer. I did not wreck my car with their daughter in it, so they trusted me enough not to wreck their apartment, I guess.
I enjoyed a full year of driving my little Corvair. It had some mechanical issues, but I lived with them. The fan belt had a tendency to pop off every now and then, prompting me to become expert at forcing Corvair belts back on alongside many roads in and just outside my town. The transmission went bad, but my step-father and I replaced it with one we found in a junkyard. Fortunately, he owned a car paint and body shop, so I always had a place to work on my car. I still remember trying to get the transmission fluid out of my long hair.
By the next summer, I had enough money to buy a bigger car. A 1965 Chevrolet Impala. Automatic, small V-8 engine. Beige, four doors, bench seats. It really had it all, including air conditioning. That feature was missing from my Corvair, but I hardly noticed–in the winter. I lived in Texas, as I mentioned earlier.
Today, I wish that I had both of those nice rides in my driveway. Right now. I never imagined that I was driving classic cars that would be worth serious money. I paid $650 for the Impala in 1971; it would bring more in 2022. But, it is not about the money. I just miss those sweet cars. Especially, since I was driving that Impala when I took Candace out for the first time. She slid across that bench seat and sat right next to me. Now, that is a nice memory.
It's KPC Again 