1962 Chevrolet Corvair Monza Wagon

The Chevrolet Corvair Monza Station Wagon is a 5 door estate/station wagon-bodied motor vehicle with a rear mounted engine driving through the rear wheels. It’s hard to believe that the Corvair wagon was made for only two years. They are maybe the rarest of the body styles and wagons are hot right now as we all know.

This Chevrolet Corvair Monza wagon has had the popular dashboard transplant; how many Spyders gave up their lovely dashes for this swap? It was the goal of every die-hard Monza owner to have a set of Spyder gauges. And every visit to the junkyard meant keeping an eye out for a new Spyder arrival before it was quickly plundered.

Under the cargo area is the popular upgrade engine, the 102 hp Turbo-Aire (not stock air cleaners). This car has an automatic transmission which would have been GM’s two-speed Powerglide. It appears that this car has the crossed-flags logo on the rear hatch door, so this engine should be Chevy’s “Super Turbo-Air” 145 cubic-inch flat-six which would have 102 hp. The “Turbo-Air” engine with 84 hp was the standard engine for automatic-equipped cars and manual transmission cars had 80 hp as the base engine. The standard Corvair heads had tiny valves, to give it good low-rpm torque. It wasn’t originally designed to be anything but a low-rpm engine with modest specific output, for its original intended role as an economy car.

Things would never be better for the Chevrolet Corvair Monza station wagon than they were in 1962. True, more power, critical chassis upgrades, and an attractive restyle were all in the offing for General Motors’ controversial compact. But 1962 brought exciting new models and enhanced performance, and production of 292,531 cars would stand as the high point in the 10-year run of Chevy’s answer to the Volkswagen Beetle.