Corvair Monza Design Studies

Jim Musser (continued)

We did a lot of development on this vehicle at a local road race course. In fact during a visit to Detroit by Roger Penske we took him to the track to evaluate the vehicle. As a result of that visit we decided to build a third chassis with a number of refinements including replacing the torsion bars with Koni spring/shock units for easier setup adjustments. After we built the third chassis we gave the second one to Styling and it was used to build the Monza SS.

The third chassis was taken to Riverside for two weeks of development testing will Bill Krause driving. At the time Krause was racing a Birdcage Maserati. Krause lapped several seconds faster in our car and in fact came within a second of Penske's record in his Cooper Special.

Corvair Monza SS (side view)

The Monza GT production clay

Interest in the vehicle became very strong and the decision was made by Chevrolet management to put it into production. R&D turned the project over to the Production Design group. A new clay model was done with the hinged canopy replaced by conventional doors. Unfortunately, shortly after the production project started the decision was made to discontinue production of the Corvair and the project was dropped.

Corvair Monza SS (front 3/4 view)

A concurrent project in R&D was a redesign of the Corvair engine to reduce cost and improve engine size flexibility. The design used a separate one piece head and barrel casting for each cylinder. This allowed us to build engines of varying size. In fact we built a two cylinder version used in a very small, inexpensive prototype vehicle. A four cylinder version was used in my front drive project. A six cylinder, 3-liter version was used in the Riverside vehicle. This engine used Weber triple carbs. Perhaps the most interesting was a ten cylinder version that was used in a full size, front drive, Chevrolet sedan prototype. The engine project was dropped when the decision was made to discontinue the Corvair.

Jim Musser

After receiving Jim's email and reading his story, I thought I'd spend some time on the web researching his career history. I found an interview with Larry Shinoda in which Jim is remembered at the proving grounds driving a Grand Sport II to 198 mph (318.7 kilometers per hour) at which point the air flow got under the thin fiberglass doors and they popped off. You know you're fast when you blow your own doors off!