What-If - Unsafe at Any Speed without the Chevrolet Corvair

In the absence of the Chevrolet Corvair (whether due to the ATL 1960-1964 models receiving anti-roll bars as standard from the outset or somehow never reaching production), what other cars are likely to become the focus of Ralph Nader's ATL Unsafe at Any Speed and how would it impact affected carmakers?
 

Driftless

Donor
He'd need to wait a decade or so, but the Ford Pinto would fit the bill....

A personal irony for me, is that I read "Unsafe At Any Speed" while taking Driver's Ed AND driving my brothers Corvair the whole time. It remains the most enjoyable and lowest maintenance GM vehicle I've been involved with... Loved that car.
 
IIRC, Nader criticized the VW Beetle too, so he'd still have that without the Corvair.

That could be interesting. He was already being criticized for focusing on 'irrelevant' issues like highway safety instead of Vietnam (after he pointed out that car crashes killed a lot more people than the war did). If he goes after the VW Beetle, it might discredit him as being a tool of the establishment. "I bet he got paid off by Ford and GM! The same people who make tanks and jeeps for WAR!"
 
The spokesman for the Insurance Company Highway Safety Board, IIHS, his name is Rader. What a surprise. SUV-type vehicles underwent considerable press during the Firestone Tire fiasco, pointing out the severe roll-over propensity. They have recently been largely helped by electronic stability control, fitted to 87% of such vehicles now. Pick-up trucks also tend towards tippiness, but never got the press, and far fewer are equipped with electronic stability control to prevent single-vehicle fatal accidents.
 
IIRC, Nader criticized the VW Beetle too, so he'd still have that without the Corvair.

Read that Nader also criticized the Volkswagen T2 as well as the Volkswagen Beetle, which could be interesting given that Volkswagen around that period was desperately seeking a replacement for the Volkswagen Beetle and yet reluctant to choose from its many Beetle replacements prior to the mk1 Volkswagen Golf (with development on the Golf only beginning in 1969).

The OTL over-reliance on a single model meant that Volkswagen was in financial crisis by the early-1970s to the point where it needed German government funding to produce the Beetle's replacement, an earlier sales decline and possible litigation in the mid/late-60s as a result of an ATL "Unsafe at Any Speed" could have interesting consequences for Volkswagen either effectively breaking the company or forcing it to rush a Beetle replacement into production with potentially dire results.

Here are links to the production figures for both the Beetle and T2.

- Beetle: http://www.thesamba.com/vw/archives/info/beetle_productionfigures.php

- T2: http://www.thesamba.com/vw/archives/info/productionfigures.php
 
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