An El Corvino Story

New to Corvairs and never heard of the “El Corvino”? What is this air-cooled Ute and what is the story behind it?

Much like the Corvair roadsters and “shorty’s”, the “El Corvino” was never a production car. In fact, it may have never been a GM concept car. It was, however, the brainchild of a few adventurous and creative Corvair owners many moons ago when Corvairs were plentiful and cheap and there was little desire to keep or restore station wagons.

Here is an article about an “El Corvino” restoration by Dave Pedersen of Corvair Minnesota written by Fran Schmit and originally published in the Nov 2023 issue of the Corvair MN Leaky Seal Newsletter. Enjoy!

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You’ve all seen Dave’s vehicle but you may not appreciate all the detailed body work that was involved in its creation. Gary Nelson had the original idea but it turned out to be a very BIG job…so Dave picked it up.

Here you can see what he got from Gary. Jim Brandberg did some hauling to aid in the project.

The basic idea was to put a 63’- 2dr Front, on a ’62 Wagon Rear, topped by a 61’s 4dr roof. Recall that the Wagon has the short doors of a 4dr. Welding the front of a 2dr to the back of a Station Wagon makes the vehicle nine inches longer (only 2” shorter than an Impala). Adding the nifty roof line of the CORVAIR 4dr (with the big lip!) accentuates that neat feature.

One of the many things Dave did to satisfy his own sense of correctness was to change the looks of the door post (on a 4dr) when you open the front door. Originally, you see all the rear door’s hardware.

Dave wanted to present the smooth view seen when you open a 2dr. This is what we can show here in comparison photos. When talking to Dave about changing out this door pillar it became obvious how much cutting and welding was involved in just this one part of the build.

He obviously had to cut up a donor car which had to be an early convert because he wanted the door to be built without that big square frame on the 4dr. The Convertible door’s glass rises with no frame around it. This allows the glass to be cut to the shape of the new top, allowing Dave more design flexibility. The photos above also show nine more inches of shiny new floor.

Cutting off the front of that side panel from the Convert and then properly fitting it to the Wagon’s panel was no small task. Many small cuts lets you fit one part to the other so that stitching together can take place. The left pic below shows how carefully he did the cutting. In the right picture we see the welding not only went up the vertical slit but it also turned and headed rearward, following more of the cutting that he had used to form the top on that panel.

A small permanent window will be artfully wedged into that little corner, under the roof. The 4dr roof is mounted there and Dave had to decide how the bottom of the roof and the top of the Wagon body would flow together. Keeping in mind the overall CORVAIR belt line structure that is the Early Model.

The beautiful 4dr Lip that shelters the angled rear window has to be in line with the whole of the roofline. When he cut off the rear window from the donor 4dr, he needed to be certain he took enough, as a donated piece always has to be a little bit longer than needed. That roof joint cannot have two seams in it! When putting those pieces together you don’t get to say, Ooops.

Here’s where we get to see the donor 4dr being scalped. Remember this piece of “roof, window, body” has to be cut to fit on top of what used to be the Wagon’s rear door –see the reddish door in the opening photo.

Piece by piece it was falling into his grand scheme. Dozens of photos click off every detail too numerous to catalog here. Clamping the roof sheets into welding position is meticulous work and a sheet like that could warp into one big Potato Chip too horrible to think about. This guy is an artist.

Deciding that the side of the new vehicle has to be continuous with the top of that convertible door to the taillight made for a lot of cutting and welding to line up above the louvers.

Dave’s artistry and welding skill put all these four cars, White, Gold, Blue and Green together into one Gorgeous El Corvino.

Don’t you all agree?

Have you ever seen an El Corvino out in the wild?

Have a crazy Corvair customization story?

Let us know in the comments!