s Daniel Goldberg remembers it, his first exposure to the infamous Chevrolet Corvair occurred in March 1989 at the age of 16. He was visiting his father's high school buddy who introduced him to his 1964 Corvair convertible, by that time slowly decaying in his Long Island garage. On that day, in that garage, Goldberg learned that he may have had an earlier encounter with the Corvair — he was probably conceived in that very car. "Whatever the case, I was hooked!" Goldberg asserts.

Now 25, Goldberg, who will be attending law school in the fall, has since owned two of the air-cooled, rear-engine cars. He also has become an advocate for the oft-maligned Corvair, which was deemed "unsafe at any speed" by Ralph Nader in his 1965 book of the same title. Goldberg is currently editor of the Northern Virginia Corvair Club's newsletter and runs a Web site dedicated to his Corvairs.

Nader Deflator
Raised in an apartment in the heart of Queens, N.Y., without a garage or driveway, Goldberg early on developed a fascination with cars, devouring books on old cars and memorizing specs and production figures for countless classics and antiques. As he got older, his interests became more focused. "I would fritter away my allowance on old car magazines and stay up nights looking at the pictorial layouts. What was most fascinating to me were the personal restoration stories that accompanied each layout," Goldberg says.

In addition to his inborn affinity to the Corvair, "I've always had a soft spot for Corvairs because of their combination of whimsical styling and technical sophistication," Goldberg remarks. As a teenager, he therefore looked critically at Nader's negative assessment of the car and concluded: "They were mechanically sophisticated yet efficient, inexpensive, exhilarating to drive and charming — I wanted one!"

Diamonds in the Rough
In 1995, Goldberg purchased his first Corvair, a red 1963 convertible. Having been interested in the image of the car rather than in the practicalities of car ownership, he says the effort of maintaining the "rust-bucket with a rotted subframe" eventually became overwhelming and Goldberg got rid of it, replacing it with a 1965 hardtop Corvair. "Despite the fact that it was a little rough and painted the ugliest shade of green imaginable, it was a cheap, solid, rust-free car with an extensive paper-trail of receipts for every bit of work ever done to it," he notes. Goldberg has since overhauled the engine and is currently stripping the paint and performing body work to restore the car to presentable condition (and soon a lovely new shade of "Artesian Turquoise," an original '65 color).

Goldberg's dedication to his Corvairs, and to Corvairs in general, is detailed on his Web site, launched in August 1997. "Since then, I've steadily improved the site in order to reflect what I wanted in a Corvair site — namely, photo documentation of unrestored Corvairs in the rough," he says. "From my perspective, old cars in their 'natural state' are far more fascinating than their fully restored counterparts." Goldberg plans to continue adding more photos of his restoration project to please the 30 or so daily visitors who share his fascination with the Corvair.

Reported by Kara Reuter, cars.com

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