A Little About The Corvair Engine

Today’s article is for those of you who may be a little newer to the Corvair world. While we will share tech articles time to time that will more advanced, we never want to lose sight of the fact that we were all new to Corvairs at one time. We want you greenhorns to become more familiar with your Corvair. A basic history of the Corvair is also worth understanding as it holds a very unique and special place in the classic car hobby.

This understanding will build confidence when you drive your Corvair and answer questions asked by curiosity seekers when you are out in the wild.

A very brief history of the Corvair engine

Work for the Corvair engine began as early as 1952 when Ed Cole (then Chief Engineer at Chevrolet) wanted to create a small compact economy car with an aluminum engine that would make a lightweight vehicle.

Choosing aluminum would be a costly decision over iron as GM didn’t have an aluminum plant to accommodate this need. GM made a deal in 1956 with Alcoa Reynolds Aluminum and made plans to secure a site in Massena, New York.

In 1957, a foundry to create Corvair engine parts broke ground and was completed in 1958. The first production parts began in April 1959 with 70 Corvair engines being built per hour at the Tonawanda Engine Plant. The plant continues to crank out Chevrolet engines to this day.

The first Corvair, including engine assembly, was hand built at Willow Run by Cecil Cole (no relation to Ed Cole) beginning on May 20th, 1959, with the first production car rolling off the assembly line on July 7, 1959. The Corvair was officially introduced to the public on October 2, 1959. This was an amazingly fast turnaround time.

Dave Newell recently gave a very in depth and interesting interview to Tony Richards touching on the early problems as a result of rushed production. You can watch that video here.

In the end, the Corvair’s air-cooled engine was reputed to be more expensive to make than any other engine in Chevrolet’s line-up except for the limited-production aluminum block 427 V8. GM spent 19 million dollars just to manufacture the engine parts for the Corvair. This would be over two hundred million in today’s dollars.

Ed Cole’s inspiration and influence to develop the Corvair engine was partly based on his own personal pursuits of being a private airplane pilot. Corvair engines are still modified to power small hobbyist aircraft to this day.

Cole had also been working on military projects as Senior Engineer at Cadillac and assigned to make a light weight military tank that would involve another horizontally opposed, flat six engine.

You can bet the invasion of air-cooled budget compacts making their way over from Europe also had a major influence.

As mentioned earlier, Corvair engines were made at the Tonawanda Engine Plant. This is the “T” prefix stamped on your engine. The month and date manufactured will follow the “T” with a letter code (ex. YC, ZF, WC) to signify type of engine, horsepower and transmission type.

The whole history of the Corvair engine is really interesting. We will share more in future bite size articles.

Now it’s time for your assignment. Go out into your garage or carport or wherever your Corvair rests when you aren’t driving it. Grab a paper towel or shop rag and wipe away the grime that is covering your engine stamp and see what yours says. Does it match the date of manufacture for the car? Let us know what you find!