wkearney99

Came across someone posting about a Speedster with a Corvair engine swapped into it. Was that ever a thing?

Howdy993

Not from the factory. Someone in their garage sure could have done it.

JackW

Back in 1968 I wanted to buy a Speedster that had a Corvair engine transplanted into it for $600 - I only had $400 and my Dad wouldn't loan me the $200 I needed to buy it. It was at Jim Downings old shop in Atlanta.

centerpunch

Yes, Crown made kits to adapt Corvair engines to VW and Porsche transaxles. An inexpensive way to double or triple your horsepower. The 2.7 liter 6 cylinder Corvair engine was available stock with up to 140 horsepower (normally aspirated) or 180 horsepower (turbocharged). Very popular with dune buggies, but also used on bugs, busses, Karmann Ghias, and, yes, 356’s and even 912’s.

https://studylib.net/doc/7468871/-co...--method-no.-1

Because it shared a transaxle with the pre-1964 front-engine Pontiac Tempest, the Corvair engine spins backwards compared to other engines, including the VW and Porsche engines.

There were two ways to solve this incompatibility.

With some transaxles you could flip the ring gear to the other side to reverse the output rotation. (That Ring gear flipping feature was included on VW transaxles so they could be used on VW type 2 bus/transporters, which had reduction gears at the end of the axles.)

There were also custom aftermarket cams that let you reverse the rotation of the Corvair engine.