1967 "Pilot" cars

[Charley]

I want one of the 283 cars.

[BillOhio]

Any of these these ever appear or did they meet the crusher?

[Mark]

One would assume they all met the crussher, but I think I have a cowl tag image of an 05B assembled 67 with a very low VIN number (like less than 100100) indicating it may have been one of these cars that was assigned a VIN, although it doesn't have any of these weird body numbers, or paint codes shown in the article as I recall.  I will dig thur my files tonight when I get home.  Maybe its just a car with a swapped VIN or cowl.

[Mark]

Heres that tag:

13th car built at Norwood,  (124677N100013) 46th body number with an 05B build date, should have been an August build date.  If they reassigned the #3 LA built car to a Norwood built cowl tag and VIN, it would match up.  Note there are no option codes on the tag, just a body number and colors.

[festival]

Any of these these ever appear or did they meet the crusher?

Yes.. here is a couple:

The first car was Gold/Gold and was assigned Vin#1 Fisher #DD01D The car was built on a trim tag already Batch assigned for fall production.  Built on FS+O 5-10, the car was promised for delivery to Chevrolet Chassis at Norwood on 5-21-66.  This car had a scheduled delivery date of 8-1-66 to the sales convention in Detroit.   This car's final destination was Kansas City Missouri.     It is the Bushmaster Race car.

http://www.yenko.net/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=400045


The next example is a Convertible.   Fisher #DD29DD.    Red, 327 white top, black interior, Magnesium wheel covers.   This car was also built on a trim tag already batch assigned for fall production.  Built on FS+O 5-3, the car was promised for delivery to Chevrolet Chassis at Norwood on 6-04-66.  This car had a scheduled delivery date of 8-8-66 to a manager at Chevrolet Janesville.  This car's final destination was New Orleans Louisiana.   

The Youtube video is kind of campy - but there is no doubt this is the car.  It's current option content matches its original build 100%


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2Y4s8KMVHA

[ZLP955]

Ed, thanks very much for posting all the details of these cars - makes for fascinating reading!

[vtfb68]

Seven future big block pilot cars ?
   VT

[Mark]

Just to be clear the 100031 in that linked youtube video has body number 890 and it is a different car than 100013 with the 046 body number I posted above.  At first I thought I had flipped the last two digits, in the VIN, but it was not so, these are two different cars.  My guess would be that the 013 car is the pilot car, and the 031 one is a later car made under regular production.  No proof one way or the other.  Thanks for the info, Phil.

[bertfam]

126677N100013 MUST be a pilot car. I don't think (but I could be wrong. I often am!!) Chevrolet would have built a "production" car in May of 1966. During that time, Norwood was still building full size cars and Novas.

126677N100031 could possibly be the first "production" convertible, but we don't have too many cars before that in the db.

Ed

[KurtS]

I made a major error. I believed the magazine.
Of course the order schedule wouldn't have the VIN's on them - VIN's were unknown until the Chevrolet side assigned them. So USCC just assumed there were no VIN's involved.

7N100001 is 09B NOR860
7N100013 is 05B NOR46
7N100031 is 09B NOR890

I'm not so sure about "built on a trim tag already Batch assigned for fall production". Some of the early cars have 09B, but not all. There are 05B tags (which fit when the cars were built) and 09B is over a month off from when that body # would have been built. NOR 8xx is mid August, not mid Sept. And that would have been a tag stamped 4 months and thousands of cars before it was needed.
It's probably the biggest anomaly #-wise I've seen. I can't explain the puzzle piece but I'm guessing it involved prepping the car for sale (removing the 110v lighting, etc).

Phil,
How far ahead did they stamp trim tags? I believe it was only when the car was on the schedule (to be built), i.e. a couple of days ahead.

I helped Jobin when #100001 first showed up - too bad I didn't ask him about the wiring cause the headliner was maybe original - the rest of the car sure wasn't!

126677N100013 MUST be a pilot car. I don't think (but I could be wrong. I often am!!) Chevrolet would have built a "production" car in May of 1966. During that time, Norwood was still building full size cars and Novas.

126677N100031 could possibly be the first "production" convertible, but we don't have too many cars before that in the db.

Pre-production cars were run down the line, mixed in with regular production. John or Phil could expand on how they pull that off, but mainly it involved leaving space on the line before / aft the car.
Remember the schedule was for 49 NOR cars. There were 2 convertibles in the first 10.
Anything before VIN 7N100050 would have been one of these pre-production cars.

Cars after the first 49 appear to have normal VINs, dates (08A), and body #'s, btw.

There are real early 68's that are stamped June, so the 68's were built to the same time schedule.

[Ron C.]

I wonder what ever happend to the 67 Z/28 that was shown to the press that day.It was a rally sport and had a rear spoiler I think. Did they sell it or is it stashed away at GM somewhere?

[Mark]

Heres something else in the old image files, 7N100031 carried this tag inside the door skin. Indicating it was some kind of pilot vehicle, or at least contained some pilot line parts.  So was there two red with white tops, black interiored pilot cars from Norwood on the list?

How would they run a completely different body style down a line building Caprices, and Chevy II's.  None of the fixtures for welding would have fit.  Note the picture of the guy working on the engine above, the car has no roof panel installed, so maybe they did what they could and finished it off line later (or that's just a GM publicity photo not even taken at the assembly plant)?  Did they use the first 50 VINs, and pull a group of 50 body tag numbers (say 840 to 890) out of the 09B schedule later after the cars had fulfilled their initial functions?  How does the 05B car and body number 046 fit into that thought?

[JohnZ]

How would they run a completely different body style down a line building Caprices, and Chevy II's.  None of the fixtures for welding would have fit.  Note the picture of the guy working on the engine above, the car has no roof panel installed, so maybe they did what they could and finished it off line later (or that's just a GM publicity photo not even taken at the assembly plant)?

That photo (page 33 from the magazine) has nothing to do with the '67 Camaro Pilot -  that photo was taken in early 1966 in the "Design Check" area at Chevrolet Engineering, and the body is an early Manufacturing Prototype (note lack of roof and interior) built across the street at Fisher Body Engineering; Chevrolet didn't care about the body details, as that was Fisher Body responsibility/content; they only cared about how Chevrolet parts attached/fit to the Fisher Body. I spent half my life in that room from 1966-1969, optimizing designs and tools 2-3 years ahead of production. Note the white wood A-frames on wheels (one next to the body, others in the background); all of the Chevrolet parts were hung, by UPC Group, on hooks on both sides of the A-frames; if a part wasn't on the car and there was an empty hook for it on the A-frame, we'd bug the responsible design/release engineer continuously to get his part to Design Check or his name went on the "Late List" just inside the door to the room, which was embarrassing.

All of the Pilot/Pre-Production specifications work, coordination with Chevrolet Engineering and Sales and Fisher Body, and the logistics work with the plants involved in getting the cars built and moving the bodies and completed cars around was handled by our Pilot Specifications Group at the Chevrolet Pilot Line in Flint (where I was the Senior Process Engineer - Passenger Cars, from 1967-1969); that Pilot Specs Group was managed by Frank Beaulieu, who was a 5-foot-6 "ball of fire" (and, later in life, lost both legs to diabetes). I have lots of great stories about working with Frank, but that's for a different time.

I wasn't involved with the Camaro Pilot - at that time I was responsible for the "B"-body (Impala/Caprice) in eleven assembly plants (3 Chevrolet, 7 GMAD, and one Canada), and we built all of those "B"-body Pilot units at the Flint Pilot Line, with bodies from Fisher Body Plant #21 in Detroit (Fisher's Pilot plant). Photo below shows '68 Pilot units leaving the Pilot Line in the spring of 1967.

[JoeC]

thanks for posting the interesting early Camaro history

has any of the cars in the Jam Handy Film been linked to the info in the article?

youtube Jam Handy Film 10 part video series

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDAFR_l9s2Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXKjOEoBXHI

[Mark]

I guess I should have asked earlier whan John posted above.  Did fisher finish the pilot body tubs at Norwood and then ship them to Flint to be final assembled on the pilot lne there, or did they run thru the entire plant at Norwood. like a normal production car.