Vintage automobile factories

1st Grand Am off the Pontiac Michigan line August 1972

 

Fiero

These show the automatic space frame drill machine during its runoff prior to 1983 productions startup

 

Wouldn't it be funny, if one of those employees were to pull a prank, by dropping a Buick body onto a Pontiac chassis?

 

Looks like a baby 58 chivy.

 

I was thinking the same thing!

 

Well I can't verify a deliberate body drop prank, but in 1986 I was in the GM Lake Orion Assembly plant when the line got way out of sync. The plant was building the GM G-bodies at the time, Chevy Monte Carlo, Olds Cutlass, & Pontiac Grand Prix's. Some were along the line around 20 Body Shells were removed from the line for defective welds, but somehow the front clips remained in place. The electronics at the time were not sophisticated enough to catch it in time, it occurred on a Thursday around shift change, I was told the 1st 2 cars with mismatched clips happened to be the same colors as the front clips bolted on and no one caught it. But the 3rd car body was not only a different brand but a different color! They shut the line down for about 15 minutes trying to figure out what to do as there was no easy way to remove the extra front clips without shutting the line down for an estimated 8 to 10 hours.
At that point the plant Manager had a cow and ordered the line restarted! As he had to make his production quota for the month! (it was the last week of the month so very little time to make up the production loss) So for the next 2 & 1/2 shifts they made cars with mismatched front clips, aprox 1200 of them! They then worked overtime out in the shipping lot swapping front clips by hand!
So if you owned a 86 Chevy, Olds or Pontiac G-body and wondered why the front clip never fit right & had excessive rattles & squeek's this may be the answer.

I was stunned when I saw it, the line workers were not allowed to stop the line back then for quality issues as they are now.

 

Now that you mentioned that story, I recall having read about it (in general terms, though), which got me on the idea of front clip swaps. Also, I think that's where the minds behind the Saturn car concept got the idea for allowing workers to halt the lines for discovered defects. Or they got it from the Japanese. But what gets me is how they could remove bodies from the line for defects, but they could not be bothered to walk across, pick up a telephone, anything, to warn the workers downstream, and perhaps do something about it!

 

Kaisers

 

That's an amazing story. I have to say that I'm not surprised this happened, but that it happened on the scale that it did is quite amazing.

 

1956 Packard Bodies going into the spray booth Conner Ave, Detroit

 

1916 Liberty Automobile line Detroit Michigan



This is a modern picture of the Liberty Headquarters Building

 

Buick City Flint Michigan 1961

 

That would have been pretty impressive to see those cars coming down through the ceiling like that.