Assassination of the Corvair

by Andrew J. White

Book Information

Category: Corvair and the Automotive Industry

Publisher: Readers Press, 1969.

Description: A response to Ralph Nader's book Unsafe at Any Speed.

Review / Comments: Andrew White's book is the most comprehensive response available to Ralph Nader's Unsafe At Any Speed.

Chapter V, entitled "The Michigan Story", includes the lengthy and detailed statements made by Frank J. Winchell, Chief Research and Development Engineer of Chevrolet Motor Division, before the Michigan Highway Senate Committee.  In his statement, Winchell explains, using a layman's terms, how a vehicle corners and how a car's engineering factors come into play.  The detailed explanations of handling from the Corvair's designers, as well as White's own explanations of the effects of oversteer and understeer are worth the price of admission alone.

Having said that, it's also important to note that this book is problematic for a few key reasons.  I hate to be an ingrate, but while it's content is first-rate, Assassination is one of the most poorly written books in anyone's Corvair library.  I have seen several Corvair people question why this book was never popular in its day and why Nader's received significantly greater attention than Assassination.  In my humble opinion, the fundamental reason is that Nader's book was readable and this one isn't.  Mr. White's use of an annoying, pedantic writing style makes it difficult to follow along.  Chief among the book's annoyances is White's tendency to put quotation marks around anything he regards as slang.  An example of this would be: He "needlessly" puts quotation marks around "anything" he regards as "slang".  It only takes a couple of minutes of slogging through sentences such as these before the reader becomes "dejected", if not just plain "nauseated."

White also makes some troublesome arguments concerning automobile safety including a fairly lengthy attempt to argue that the use of seatbelts is dangerous.  His little diagrams of human spines snapping due to lap-belt usage are not for the faint of heart.

Unfortunately, the Corvair community had the right guy making the right argument at almost the right time, but his written presentation and problematic positions on unrelated arguments (e.g., seatbelts) adversely affect his credibility on the central Corvair issue.  Too bad.

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