From Prof. Larry Claypool and the Corvair Historical Society…
Today we’re sitting at our sales desk at Hometown Chevrolet, reading up on on the latest changes & additions to the 61 model lineup. We’ve heard that a Monza version of the Corvair 4 door would be arriving shortly and this January 10th bulletin confirms it. The bulletin points out that a front bench seat is still standard in the Monza 4 door, but buckets seats can be had at extra cost.
A few days later we receive a nice 8 page brochure on the 4 door Monza – unusually, it’s made just for the sales team, not the end customer. The brochure points out the Monza sedan seats will be vinyl with nylon faced cloth inserts for the seating area, unlike the all vinyl seats in the coupe. 6 color choices are availble.
3 months later another bulletin comes across our desk-the bucket seats for the Monza 4 doors ordered with Green or Blue won’t be cloth & vinyl anymore- just all vinyl like the coupes. In May we get yet another letter indicating that Black interiors will now be all vinyl as well. Eventually, all the Monza sedan bucket seats will become all vinyl just as in the coupes.
Hey, isn’t all vinyl an upgrade!!!???
At the time, we probably thought so, but with 60 some years of settling onto freezing cold or sunbaked hot vinyl, our opinions may have changed a bit.
Because the 61 Monza sedan itself was a mid year additon, and the cloth insert bucket seats were both optional and short lived, few originals are ever seen today at shows.
But you will see a number of Monza bucket seats that have been refitted with some kind of cloth inserts at some point in their life- showing the cloth -vinyl combo certainly was not a dead end choice!
That’s all for today kiddos. Don’t forget if you want to visit the National Corvair Museum at its Springfield Illinois location, this upcoming weekend 9/26 & 27 is your last chance. We’ll be beginning the moving process the following weekend.
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