For 1960, General Motors had a new and different kind of car to market to the American public: the air-cooled, rear-engine Chevrolet Corvair. 

In part out of necessity, Chevrolet adopted a two-pronged, almost contradictory approach in pitching the new Corvair to American car shoppers. On the one hand, the Corvair was the most startling and revolutionary car in a generation, offering advanced features and attributes found on no other automobile on the market. On the other hand, the Corvair was a trustworthy Chevrolet product, tried and true, the acme of value and dependability. The bifurcated messaging was fairly successful, too, until a few years later when safety issues began to cast a shadow over the Corvair’s largely positive image.

In this original 1960 Corvair television spot, filmed in Aspen, Colorado and narrated by our old friend, Mr. Chevrolet himself, the golden-throated Joel Aldred, the emphasis is on the differences. Famous Norwegian-American Olympic skier Stein Ericksen is on the scene to showcase the Corvair’s superior traction on snow and ice, thanks to its novel rear-engine chassis layout with the mass concentrated over the drive wheels. And while it’s not mentioned here, the Corvair’s air-cooled engine had no coolant to freeze up, another noteworthy advantage in cold and snowy climates. (Another Corvair commercial spot featured ice fishermen.) Sales the first year totaled 250,000 cars, a decent performance for such a distinctive and unfamiliar product. Video below.