At least some Chrysler products had left-hand threaded lug nuts on one side as late as mid 1960s. I can't say when they changed them, or if they ever did. I had a Plymouth Valiant from that era (briefly) that was thus equipped. It was apparently a holdover from when all the power tools on the assembly line ran off belts from overhead shafts. If you point the tool in opposite directions, with the belt on the same shaft, the rotation direction is reversed (from one side of the car to the other). Xler just kept them that way because it was traditional, I suppose; although various people had other nonsense explanations for it.

Re the Corvair, does anybody remember the other book Nader wrote? A couple of years before "Unsafe at Any Speed," in which he blasted the Corvair, he wrote one that ripped at the entire US auto industry for making cars that were sluggish, unresponsive, that plowed in turns, etc. ... . The Corvair essentially "corrected" all the complaints he made in the first book, thus proving that US drivers weren't really adapted to having sporty high performance cheap cars.

John