[alloysteel]

There was a vehicle, for which the differential between the front and rear tires was an ESSENTIAL part of the engineering, yet many people failed to heed the warnings.

The Chevrolet Corvair, a rear-engined vehicle from the early and middle 1960’s (and a classic in its own right), in which the recommendations were for the pressure in the FRONT tires was to be ab about 4 PSI less than the rear tires, so the front wheels would “stick” more while rounding a curve. But with the tires pumped up to the same pressure, there was a tendency to continue to plow straight ahead with the front wheels slewing, and resulted in either an overturn or just shooting straight off the side of the road. Ralph Nader seized upon this unusual road behavior, and denounced the Corvair as “Unsafe at Any Speed”, a screed meant to attack GM on every level, and led to the early discontinuance of the production of the Corvair.

“Safety” experts are such rectal orifices at times.

[Olog-hai]

Volkswagen Type 1 (Beetle) was the same way, with front tire pressure lower than rear pressure. But of course, Nader didn’t go after them because, you know, not evil American.

[M1903A1]

One of my father’s friends had a Corvair, and ran into handling problems like you described. He couldn’t resolve them until he (gasp, whodathunkit?) *read the manual* and changed pressures accordingly.

[Fresh Wind]

The basis for the Corvair's problem was the use of the swing axle rear suspension. For the 1965 model year and thereafter, Chevrolet replaced the swing axles with a modern system using fully articulated half-shafts that is almost universally used today in FWD vehicles and many front engine/rear drive vehicles. That fixed most of the Corvair's handling issues.

Unfortunately, that came too late to prevent Ralph Nader's hit job on what was actually a very nice car in its later years.