D.A.C.C. Corvair Homecoming

It was while visiting Detroit for the fourth annual Woodward Dream Cruise, August 15, that I met Richard, a D.A.C.C. member and the owner of a nice looking '65 Monza which we spotted parked along the cruise route. Noting my obvious interest in his car, Richard suggested I should return to Detroit the following weekend for the D.A.C.C. Corvair Homecoming, an annual event that promised to attract up to one hundred Corvairs!

This appealed to me for a couple of reasons. At that point, I had never been to a Corvair event, so if I didn't take advantage of this invitation, it might be a long while before I'd get another chance to have a close look at so many Corvairs in one place at one time.

My friend Warren and his seven year old son, Dylan, had accompanied my ten year old son, Mark, and me to the Dream Cruise. Warren suggested Mark should stay with Dylan for the week, and I could return to pick him up. This, he reasoned, and would give me a chance to bring my wife, Christiane, back to Detroit for the first time in years. Perfect! A quick phone call to Christiane, and the trip was on.

The following weekend, Christiane and I arrived on the Friday and discovered the weather forecast was predicting a high probability of rain showers during the event, on Saturday. By morning, however, things looked a little better. While I imagined that some of the participants might be discouraged from attending by the threat of showers, we were going to attend no matter what the weather. After all, we'd driven 500 miles from Ottawa, and it would not be for nothing.

We stocked up on 35mm film and made our way across the bridge from Windsor to Interstate 96, west to Plymouth. The skies were sunny, and it became obvious we'd have enough time to meet some Corvair people and shoot plenty of pictures before the weather turned fowl.

My excitement mounted as we approached Plymouth and found our way to the host hotel. Chris and Mark were amused by my enthusiasm.

One of the first vehicles to catch our attention was the dune buggy at right, owned by Archie Russel of Ohio. It uses the Corvair engine and transaxle combination that has always been popular with dune buggy enthusiasts.

The photo below gives you a really good look at the Corvair engine. It's easy to see why the Chevy engineers referred to the horizontally-opposed, 6-cylinder engine as a "pancake."

Corvair-powered dune buggy

Breathing through an Edlebrock competition air cleaner, a 4-barrel carburetor sits atop an aftermarket center-mount manifold and sends its air/fuel mixture to a set of 140 heads. Spent gases exit through a set of free-breathing and aggressive sounding headers. It was music to my ears.

Corvair power