Junkyard Treasure: 1962 Chevrolet Corvair 95 Rampside Pickup

Even more than 50 years after the final Chevrolet Corvair left the assembly line, I still run across discarded examples of GM’s ambitious rear-engined car when I explore car graveyards around the country. Among all those doomed Corvairs, however, the truck versions have been quite rare. Chevrolet made the Corvair van for the 1961 through 1965 model years and the Corvair pickup from 1961 through 1964; here’s a super-rare Corvair 95 Rampside Pickup in an Arizona junkyard (just a few rows away from the ’71 Toyota Hilux pickup we saw last week).

The Rampside came with this big fold-down side panel that gave easy access to the bed for motorcycles, wheelbarrows, heavy objects, whatever you had. That was a good thing, because the engine-under-the-bed design made the loading area fairly high off the ground. Real cheapskates could get the regular Loadside version without the ramp.

Power came from a 145-cubic-inch air-cooled boxer six-cylinder engine rated at 80 horsepower, mounted beneath the bed (the forward part of the bed offered covered storage areas beneath the bed floor). Curb weight was just 2,660 pounds, which was a bit heavier than the Corvair Pickup’s Volkswagen Transporter rival but still much lighter than a regular Chevrolet C10 pickup.

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