In the mid-1960s, the Chevrolet Corvair became the most reviled car in the United States of America. The automotive press loved this zippy rear-engined machine for its crisp handling and its race-y feel — but it didn't take long before the machine to become the center of hundreds of lawsuits alleging that the car was not only responsible for injuring and killing its drivers and passengers, but that General Motors had known that would happen all along. It was a huge allegation, one that at best would cost GM millions of dollars, and at worst would kill the company.

But the folks at Chevy's research and development department were adamant that they'd created a great, well-tested, and safe product, and they decided that the only way to prove it would be to fight back. The only way to fight back would be to gather as much data as possible about how cars handled. The only way to gather that data would be to hire the best minds in motorsport — the engineers and drivers who knew more about performance than anyone else — to undertake a comprehensive but secret program of testing.

And General Motors decided that the best folks for the job would be the tiny, Midland, Texas-based Chaparral race team, headed by automotive legend Jim Hall.

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Episode Bibliography: 

• Texas Legend: Jim Hall and His Chaparrals by George Levy

• Unsafe at Any Speed by Ralph Nader