It would be nice to see a complete example: SPD, MDH and shipping invoice data for one and the same car.
When was the last production day for C-Bodies?
- Thread starter 1978 NYB
- Start date
It would be nice to see a complete example: SPD, MDH and shipping invoice data for one and the same car.
I don't think there is. The door labels in 1970 were just Month Year IIRC. Certainly not the day or the hour. As I've said many times, the shipping invoice is probably the next most reliable source for a build date. But rarely if ever did they end up in a car. I've only seen a handful and that was because I had a contact who would maybe 3-4 times a year, pull one for me as a favour. And the microfiche rolls he used to find these cars all disappeared about 10-12 years ago. I've heard rumours that somebody in the plant managed to get them out, and I've also heard rumours that they all went to a landfill. The truth is probably somewhere in between.
Maybe Santa can help with that. I don't know anybody else who could. Certainly not me.
But what would I write about Fred? Chrysler's screwy way of counting cars? Chrysler product planning that was famous for making all the wrong decisions for all the right reasons? All of the quirks that would/could/did happen in assembly plants that lead to 99% of the questions posed on this board? Or how about all of the gaffs that were made in the documents Chrysler had produced for release to the public via the dealers and other methods? How many people know that there are TWO versions of the 1970 Dodge Dealer Data Book? Or how many pieces of literature there are that have "Revised" or a print date in the middle of the model year because of the mistakes in the previous version or versions? And there's always the perennial favourite: How many of my car did they make?
Printed material that came from Chrysler "probably" has fewer mistakes in it than aftermarket commercially produced books. I'm friends with a couple of the authors of Crestline books. I was given an early copy of one of them (name redacted for obvious reasons) and overnight found about 24 errors in it. Surprisingly nobody wanted to hear that. Also was given what was supposed to have been an advance copy of another author's book and we went through it together and I found mistakes in it too. I said "Well, at least since this is an advance copy, you can go back and fix them". The response was "Too late, this is the version that's going on sale".
Commercially produced books suffer from too tight deadlines, typos, proof readers who lost their jobs as circus clowns, and too often an author who churns books out for a living and doesn't take the time to pay attention to the source material he's rounded up to put in the book.
I've whined enough. What would YOU like me to write about?
I'm surprised you're surprised. Small and sometimes not so small parts and pieces get reused when ever possible. The green eye-shade/Bean Counter types practically demand it. A "new" car program might get a launch budget of $XXXX million dollars. The pressure to come in under that number is IMMENSE within the company. And even once the car is launched, then the focus is on what was termed "Pulling The Money Out". When the 1960 Valiant was launched a number of corners were cut to meet the launch timelines. Probably the most obvious was the gauge of the steel in the rocker panels. Being a unibody car, the rocker panels took the place of the longitudinal frame members in a body/frame car. A had a friend, now deceased who was a major launch manager for the program. He indicated that about mid October of '59 once the plant was up and mostly running, they took a car straight off the line, at random and went to Chelsea with it. They knew the rockers were thicker than they needed to be,but the erred on the side of caution when they launched. The assignment was to put a metal cutting blade in a skill saw and start cutting slots in the rocker panels, and run the car around the high speed oval to see how the handling was affected. When they had over two dozen cuts in each rocker panel with no ill effects, they downsized the gauge of steel used. And pulled some money out of the car.
Another case in point. All Fbody cars use the same outside door handle at every position along with Mbody, and some Bbody cars. Front/Rear/Right/left, they're all the same. So good for the door handle guys. But then the I/P guys torpedoed that cost save in a big way. At launch the light, wiper and rear blower or defogger switch were all in the same general area in the dash. Standard was lights and 2 speed wipers. That was one faceplate. Then if the car was ordered with a blower defogger that was another faceplate. or with an electric defroster, that was a 3rd faceplate, and then repeat that whole process if you ordered three speed wipers. Then in later years the wiper option went to variable wipers. So one outside door handle got trumped by over a dozen different switch faceplates. Way to go guys.
As someone once said, you can't make this **** up.
polara71
Old Man with a Hat
All of the above x 10. I've read your ramblings for eighteen plus years now. You are like EF Hutton. When you talk, I listen .
Kevin, any rythmn or reason why Chrysler made all of the changes on the 1978 C-Body knowing it was the last year of production?
If they were anything back then like they are now it was use whatever’s left in the parts bins to make the final “special “ editions. Case in point put 5 year old wheels on a base old bodystyle truck with a leftover sport hood and call it something catchy like ....”Warlock”
69CoronetRT
Senior Member
Yes. There is.
Different plants did things differently. There is a date on the St. Louis BS that’s believed to be a more accurate indicator of actual assembly than the SPD on the tag. Exactly what years this applies to I don’t know but it does occur in, at least, 69 and 70.
This same coding is not used at Hamtramck or Lynch Road. Was it used at Belvedere, Newark or Jefferson for C bodies? Maybe. Let’s look at BS from these plants during various years and see what we find.....
Research continues......
The car was bid to $18k and did not sell. Here's the auction listing writeup on it.
HIGHLIGHTS
- Believed to be 61,000 miles
- Delivered new to Pettit Brothers Chrysler in Virginia
- Believed to have been special order by Bill Pettit and kept in his collection for 23 years
- Sold to Northglenn Dodge in 2001
- Northglenn Dodge retained ownership until August 2018
- Highly optioned
- 440 CI V-8 engine
- Final year for this body style
- 1 of 1 color combination
- Original books and manuals
- Bill Pettit Chrysler Dealer Id card
- Bill Pettit State of Virginia Franchise dealer license
.
I've related all of this before, but I'll do it one more time. In the 1978 time period I had a good friend who was the chief chassis and suspension engineer at Chrysler. He became ill and I spent as much time with him as I could until he couldn't tolerate visitors any more. Amongst the many conversations we had was one involving the '78 New Yorkers. Chrysler had always, rightly or wrongly, followed GM's lead when it came to design, features and so on. GM brought out their downsized full size cars "GM Bbody" in 1977 and caught Chrysler off guard. They were working on the Rbody cars, but were hoping they could bring them out as 1980s. GM forced their hand. Because the '78 Cbodies were still scheduled for one more year, there was a frantic program to do whatever, to make the Cbodies not look so ponderous next to the GM cars. As a result, the fender skirts became an option, and wheel openings were emphasized. That's why there is that thin lower side moulding that goes around the wheel openings to "help" make the car look lighter and smaller. Chrysler would still sell you fender skirts if you wanted them. (There was probably some sort of purchase commitment to the vendor where Chrysler would pay for "X" number of sets of skirts whether they used them or not.). I strongly suspect, but can't specifically recall, if the one year only wiper design was a cost or weight save. A number of people have commented over the years that the '78s had some "cheaper" components in them that the earlier cars did not. I can just about guarantee that these were either for cost or weight savings or both.
I've probably also documented all of the following before, so this is a one last time thing too. As for all of the confusion and head scratching over the "last" car built, it's been well documented that SPDs don't mean squat in terms of when a car was built, and MDHs are only marginally better. The "best" indicator of a build date is the car's shipping invoice. In 1979/1980 Historical had a huge area outside of the collection itself in Building 401 (in Highland Park) that had rows and rows and rows of 4drawer file cabinets. Each row was probably 30 cabinets deep. These cabinets had shipping invoices in them. Along side of these cabinets were another row of cabinets and on top of them was a series of binders like you'd find in an old time auto parts store where the counter guys looked up what you were after. These books contained the VINs of all of the cars they had invoices for. And the invoices were organized by the S.O. number. Nothing else. So when you found out what S.O. you were looking for, you'd also find out what cabinet and drawer to look in. An individual S.O. could have up to 50 cars. So you had to look through them manually to find the vin of the car you wanted to find.
Historical at the time was also sharing space in 401 with Chrysler's print shop. The print shop did EVERYTHING Chrysler did that was internal. Dealer letters, pads of forms, TSBs and a bunch more stuff. Anyway, there were invoices that went back probably 10-15 years if not farther. The really old invoices had been microfilmed eons before that which is why they can "usually" find older cars. There was one management type person in 401 who mostly presided over the print shop but did have authority for the whole building. At some point in the early 70s, somebody put the notion in this guy's head that Chrysler didn't need to keep documents for more than 7 years for legal reasons. He took it to heart, and started throwing out/scrapping invoices. He carried this on for nearly 7 years before somebody realized what the hell he was doing and told him to stop. That's why there are no invoices from part way through 1965 to the end of 1972. If you read stories about them being "lost" or "burned" they're not true. Some moron salaried guy took it upon himself to have them thrown out. And why should you believe what I've just related? Because I got it from people. Who. Were. There. No the guy didn't get fired. His responsibilities were severely cut back, but he didn't get fired.
What also isn't widely known is that at least into the mid 1980s these invoices could have been reprinted. "Could" being the operative word. Every year each assembly plant sent their master computer tape of the cars they built to the computer center in Highland Park. And those guys (then) kept them. I know this because I had a contact who was OCD for hemi Challenger convertibles from 1970. On his own, he came up with the U.S. SG30 (I'm not explaining them any more) and thought it represented production. I burst his bubble on that and then told him about the cars that went to Canada. A little simple math equation said that for all of the hemi cars sold in the U.S. and Canada compared to all of the Challengers sold and all of the Challengers built, there should have been one more car. Somehow this fellow was able to cash in a bunch of brownie points with the computer people and get someone to write a program for the then current mainframe computers to do a search on the now three generation old tape from HP. The search was for JS27R. It found all the cars sold in the U.S., all the cars sold in Canada and the last car was sold through a military PX in Gemany. I was intrigued by this so I asked the guys who did the SG30 reports in the U.S. if they did a report on PX sales. That question was met with gales of laughter. I swear he almost fell on the floor. He finally said "We don't track military PX sales! Do you know how many cars we sell through PXs?" I said maybe a couple of hundred? He replied "All we know is we LOSE more cars than that every year!" Now it was my turn to fall on the floor. He related that every year some of the cars they ship from assembly plants just never arrive at their destinations. Nobody looked into it. THe railroads were on the hook for the cost of the cars, so Chrysler didn't care. If it was a sold order car, they'd just build another one. (Want to throw THAT into the mix of how VINS get scrambled??) So back to the point. Why didn't Chrysler reprint these invoices? Because nobody wanted to spend the money. That's as simple as it gets. Every time a management guy came through historical when I was there, I'd stop and shoot the breeze with him. I tried with several people to convince them that Historical could be a profit center. Actually make money for the company. But nobody was convinced. I believe Historical is now under the wing of the PR department which is probably the best place for it to be. I doubt the PR guys would fork over the $$ to reprint invoices, but it would be nice if they could run the info on those assembly plant tapes and put it into an Adobe Acrobat or some such data base type file that the Historical folks could access. My head just spins at the thought that every Mopar person out there could get their car confirmed by "the factory". It would stop an unfathomable amount of BS and eliminate fraud with all of the "manufactured" cars out there too.
Virtually all of my contacts are retired or dead or both and I'm too old too. There's a giant pile of shoulda/woulda/coulda out there that's just going to rot.
Thanks Kevin for the info and responding!
commando1
Old Man with a Hat
Carmine
Old Man with a Hat
If you read this article (for more than just the date of the last C-body) there is so much to process. It touches on history, class, race, the role of government, separation of government powers, international trade and yes, manufacturing and our beloved Chrysler Corporation. Every word could be written today...
Jeep deal now a done deal with 5,000 jobs and $2.5 billion investment on the way
What makes you so uneasy about taking the MDH as first-class info on when a car was built? Going by this sequence of events
I would say the MDH comes pretty close.
Key term is "pretty close". It `should' be right almost all the time. But given that it's not the very last thing attached to the car before it comes off the line, all of the possibilities that have been already covered in this thread could apply.
From the "You can't make this **** up" file, is this: MANY years ago a guy called me up and was really perplexed. He had a black Ebody Challenger with a black leather interior. And he found a broadcast sheet in his car. It matched everything in his car. But the sheet wasn't FOR his car. He couldn't understand what happened. My simple explanation was that his and at least one other black leather interior car came off the line in close proximity to each other and both had to go into a major repair "hole"(repair bay). What ever the issue was that had to be fixed required pulling all the seats out of both cars. They were (literally) placed in a pile, and once the repairs were done, the repair guys grabbed seats and put them back into the cars. They didn't check the broadcast sheets to see if the vins matched. They both had black leather interiors and that's all they cared about. Seats in, job done, cars sent on their way.
So, is the MDH a valid marker to go by? Yeah, MOST of the time.
Do you mean to say that the assumed repair action made the MDH on the doorsticker invalid because that action changed the moment at which the car is considered to be completed?
If I also may assume something, I would say the need for repair was most probably established during inspection, well before the doorsticker was printed.
Apart from that, a much simpler explanation for the wrong broadcast sheet is that the mix-up already happened during the build process, much like you described: Just take a seat from the black-seat pile.
If I also may assume something, I would say the need for repair was most probably established during inspection, well before the doorsticker was printed.
Apart from that, a much simpler explanation for the wrong broadcast sheet is that the mix-up already happened during the build process, much like you described: Just take a seat from the black-seat pile.
Do you mean to say that the assumed repair action made the MDH on the doorsticker invalid because that action changed the moment at which the car is considered to be completed?
Ideally when a vehicle reaches the end of the assembly line, it's next journey is to the rolls test in the plant. If it passes that, it goes through final inspection and then is release to be shipped. At that point the shipping invoice is created.
If I also may assume something, I would say the need for repair was most probably established during inspection, well before the doorsticker was printed.
Has the point in the assembly process where the MDH label is applied been established?
Ideally when a vehicle reaches the end of the assembly line, it's next journey is to the rolls test in the plant. If it passes that, it goes through final inspection and then is release to be shipped. At that point the shipping invoice is created.
If I also may assume something, I would say the need for repair was most probably established during inspection, well before the doorsticker was printed.
Has the point in the assembly process where the MDH label is applied been established?
Apart from that, a much simpler explanation for the wrong broadcast sheet is that the mix-up already happened during the build process, much like you described: Just take a seat from the black-seat pile.
Sorry, don't agree on this one. Seats that come in from the vendor are in the vendor's dunnage (shipping container/pallet/box/ etc). As the car presents itself at the seat install stations, the operator goes to that section of the line-side seat storage and retrieves the noted seat. If a car ends up in a major repair hole and its neighbours all have the same interior, i.e. black leather, those seats will literally be placed in a pile. The repair bay doesn't keep dunnage to put parts back into. There may be some care taken to not put the seats down on an oily or dirty spot on the floor, but that will be about it. Also, remember that the car is used by the line operators as a garbage container for broadcast sheets no longer needed by the operators, hence why the sheets are stuffed into seat springs, or thrown on the floor before carpet installation and so on. Brand new seats waiting to be installed in a car for the first time will not have broadcast sheet stuffed into them.
I was either lucky enough or unlucky enough to have never actually worked in an assembly plant, but I've been through quite a few. I wish there were more members of this board who HAD worked in an assembly plant so that they could confirm the realities of how a car is assembled. It's not awful on this board, but there are some where many members are under an enormous fallacy of how an assembly plant works. Robotic precision is an ideal, but when humans are involved, that notion is VERY quickly set way aside. While all manufacturers now have far fewer defects going out the door than in years past, there is still some truth, depending on the manufacturer, about whether or not a well assembled car is a planned event or a fluke. Everybody's PR people would gasp in horror at a comment like that, as do some members of some boards. Processes in an assembly plant are normally planned out by some pretty smart engineers, who unfortunately don't have to do the job they've spec'd out. If they did, a lot of jobs would be spec'd out differently than they are. Throw in some time study guys whose sole purpose is to turn an assembly plant into a forced labour camp and hopefully, you can see how the recipe gets effed up. Back when the UAW had some backbone the union stewards would argue with the management types about the absurdity of how some of the jobs were laid out. It wasn't until the management types realized that listening to the guys on the line would save them money. But the money they were saving wasn't in the cost of assembling the car, although there was some of that, it was primarily in the cost of workman's compensation costs. A guy off on comp is still paid by the company either directly or in company paid premiums, but either way he's not "working". I'm rambling again. I'm out.
Sorry, don't agree on this one. Seats that come in from the vendor are in the vendor's dunnage (shipping container/pallet/box/ etc). As the car presents itself at the seat install stations, the operator goes to that section of the line-side seat storage and retrieves the noted seat. If a car ends up in a major repair hole and its neighbours all have the same interior, i.e. black leather, those seats will literally be placed in a pile. The repair bay doesn't keep dunnage to put parts back into. There may be some care taken to not put the seats down on an oily or dirty spot on the floor, but that will be about it. Also, remember that the car is used by the line operators as a garbage container for broadcast sheets no longer needed by the operators, hence why the sheets are stuffed into seat springs, or thrown on the floor before carpet installation and so on. Brand new seats waiting to be installed in a car for the first time will not have broadcast sheet stuffed into them.
I was either lucky enough or unlucky enough to have never actually worked in an assembly plant, but I've been through quite a few. I wish there were more members of this board who HAD worked in an assembly plant so that they could confirm the realities of how a car is assembled. It's not awful on this board, but there are some where many members are under an enormous fallacy of how an assembly plant works. Robotic precision is an ideal, but when humans are involved, that notion is VERY quickly set way aside. While all manufacturers now have far fewer defects going out the door than in years past, there is still some truth, depending on the manufacturer, about whether or not a well assembled car is a planned event or a fluke. Everybody's PR people would gasp in horror at a comment like that, as do some members of some boards. Processes in an assembly plant are normally planned out by some pretty smart engineers, who unfortunately don't have to do the job they've spec'd out. If they did, a lot of jobs would be spec'd out differently than they are. Throw in some time study guys whose sole purpose is to turn an assembly plant into a forced labour camp and hopefully, you can see how the recipe gets effed up. Back when the UAW had some backbone the union stewards would argue with the management types about the absurdity of how some of the jobs were laid out. It wasn't until the management types realized that listening to the guys on the line would save them money. But the money they were saving wasn't in the cost of assembling the car, although there was some of that, it was primarily in the cost of workman's compensation costs. A guy off on comp is still paid by the company either directly or in company paid premiums, but either way he's not "working". I'm rambling again. I'm out.
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