[aukc]

trying to collect as much info as I can on milestone event at Wentzville Assembly on October 29, 1991

Here's what I've got so far - 30 millionth Pontiac celebration

any comments, suggestions or contributions much appreciated,

Thanks, Mike

[Keith Seymore]

Wow - it appears that you may already know more about this event than anyone else alive!



Seriously, your research looks very thorough and nicely presented. I don't have much more I can offer, except - I recognized one of the names: Rick Asher, designated as the contact in your Press Kit.

I knew him from the GM Communications group. A quick check of the org chart pages here at GM shows he is not still working and I recall that he may have retired in the recent go-rounds. Checking the POCI registry shows his ancient job at Pontiac/GMC but no new info.

Let me see if I can find some contact information for Rick and get you two in touch.

K

[Keith Seymore]

Private Message sent with contact info for Rick Asher.

K

[Old Blue 66]

WOW!! Thats a lot of info. Nice homework you did. Where is this Bonne now?? Does GM still have it??

Your white Bonneville is very nice too Mike. Ive always liked that body style.

[aukc]

Originally Posted by Old Blue 66

WOW!! Thats a lot of info. Nice homework you did. Where is this Bonne now?? Does GM still have it??

Your white Bonneville is very nice too Mike. Ive always liked that body style.

this is where the story takes a sad turn. The 30 millionth pontiac is not in the GM Historic Collection. I'm still trying to sort out exactly how and when, but apparently some time shortly after the milestone event, the car was mistakenly transferred to a dealership and sold. To make matters worse, the VIN of the milestone vehicle was not recorded. During my research, I did actually try to track down the vehicle, I haven't given up hope, but it does not look promising.

Thanks for the comment about my car, it's heart may be buick, but it's spirit is pontiac, Mike

[Keith Seymore]

Well - I re-read your stuff and I have another couple thoughts:

a) Who did you talk to at the Heritage Center? I have three or four contacts there that might have access to different records.

b) I find it hard to believe nobody kept a copy of the VIN on that car. Didn't I see a picture somewhere with the build sheet taped to the front end (or am I thinking of something else)?

I saw another name I recognized: Muriel Finken. I worked for Muriel for several years; if she was an engineering manager she might have some additional info (if she kept it). Would you like for me to ask her?

Lastly, I watched the video and saw something funny that caught my eye. At the 1:58 mark you can see the cars being painted robotically, using a "mini bell" system manufactured by Behr. These small cones spin at a high rate of speed, approximately 20,000 rpm, and "sling" the paint onto the electrically charged body. You can actually see the paint going around corners as it is attracted to the sheet metal.

The only problem is, for metallic based paints, the electric charge takes all the flakes and aligns them in a unified, structured order. It's totally different from the random pattern of flakes that is desired and changes the appearance of the paint.

When we installed this system in Flint we had to follow the turbine bells with a light color coat from a traditional reciprocating sprayer, so that the color of the truck body would match the standardized color chip.

K

[Old Blue 66]

Originally Posted by aukc

this is where the story takes a sad turn. The 30 millionth pontiac is not in the GM Historic Collection. I'm still trying to sort out exactly how and when, but apparently some time shortly after the milestone event, the car was mistakenly transferred to a dealership and sold. To make matters worse, the VIN of the milestone vehicle was not recorded. During my research, I did actually try to track down the vehicle, I haven't given up hope, but it does not look promising.

Thanks for the comment about my car, it's heart may be buick, but it's spirit is pontiac, Mike

Im with Keith on this. Someone had to record the VIN. Sadly if it were sold, its probably gone to recycle heaven by now.

[aukc]

Originally Posted by Keith Seymore

a) Who did you talk to at the Heritage Center? I have three or four contacts there that might have access to different records.

Hi Keith, the person I talked to is John Kyros, I think he is employed by Allied Vaughn instead of GM which does seem strange to me, but he is at the GM Media Archive which is located at the Heritage Center. John checked with Heritage Center manager Greg Wallace who confirmed the vehicle is not in the collection and also the Heritage Center has no record of the VIN,

but absolutely please, if you have other contacts that might have access to different records, I would very much appreciate if you could ask them to have a look.

Also, it is my understanding that at the time of the event, there was no such thing as the GM Heritage Center, instead each GM Division managed their heritage collections seperately, so I thought maybe it would have started off in the Pontiac collection, so I did check with Jim Mattison of PHS. His recollection is also that no VIN record was kept.

Originally Posted by Keith Seymore

I saw another name I recognized: Muriel Finken. I worked for Muriel for several years; if she was an engineering manager she might have some additional info (if she kept it). Would you like for me to ask her?

again, yes please, that is what I am most interested in, the people that worked for Pontiac PR at the time of the event, the assemby plant employees that were at Wentzville at that time, any invited guest that were there, I want them to know I'm interested in what ever they might recall from the event and I will add it to the story.

Also, thanks for Rick A. contact info, I will send him a note

[Keith Seymore]

Ok - John Kyros is a good contact (his name has come up recently on another project) and so is Greg Wallace; so if you checked with them then I would trust their input.

Also - you are correct; prior to the Heritage Center each division (and the Design Studio) would store their vehicles at various remote job shops and contract houses throughout Southeast Michigan. In fact - the Heritage Center was too small by the time it was finished, so all the cars do not reside there even now. That's one of the reasons that vehicles are rotated through the display, because there's not enough for all of them in that one location.

I can agree that appears no official record of the VIN was kept, but we will keep checking with those involved to see if one of them happened to jot it down. I'll ask Muriel what she remembers; I still have the VINs of every pre-production vehicle that was built under my tenure (back to 1991) - including from when I worked for Muriel!

I would encourage you to try Rick's cell phone but I will check with Kelly and make sure she didn't have a typo in the email address.

K

[projectfolly]

Great work Mike!


I don’t have much to offer in terms of knowledge of the event itself, but while reading through your research, I noticed a small detail with regard to Flint Automotive Division or FAD, which I may be able to add to.
Specifically:"Through the combined efforts of Pontiac, Flint Automotive Division (I think this is a reference to the source of the supercharged 3800 engine) and Wentzville Assembly Center employes, the historic Susie took less than three years from concept approval to start of production."
Your reference to the source of the 3800 engine out of Flint is correct, as the engine plant was in Flint located in the complex that was then Buick City.
However, there was another facility in Flint. I worked at Flint Automotive Division in the electrical engineering group at that time. FAD was an engineering center where design and development work was done on the C, H and G body platforms. This included the Bonneville which was an H car. So that could be how the Bonneville could be tied to FAD.
For what its worth, FAD was located at the old Fisher Body plant in Flint on south Saginaw street. This was a very old facility and one of the locations of the “Sit Down Strike” in 1937. In the latter 80s, the plant was converted to what was called the Great Lakes Technology Centre. We moved in to the building as FAD in 1989.
As time went on, the FAD name was changed to Cadillac Luxury Car Division when the Cadillac Clark street engineering facility in Detroit was shut down and the employees and work transferred to Flint. Later the name was changed to Mid Lux Car Division. As an aside, while I was working there, I was given this ’92 Bonneville poster. I pulled the edge back a little bit to show that it is clear in sections, presumably meant to be displayed in dealership windows.

Regards,

Mark

[aukc]

Hi Mark,
thanks for the feedback, this is great.

so that poster is a static cling plastic film poster? I've never seen an item like that before. if you ever decide you want to sell it, or if you know someone else with one that wants to sell, please let me know. That would go great with my car at the next All Pontiac show.

[aukc]

don't mean to hi-jack my own thread, but if you're interested in the buick 3800 v6, then here is my collection so far on that topic - http://s490.photobucket.com/albums/r...k%203800%20v6/

[aukc]

So I just checked back with Reg Harris and Jim Mattison regarding how Pontiac could have let the 30 millionth milestone car get away, and this is what I'm able to piece together.

the timing of the celebration happened to coincide with the SSEi model just starting to become available. There was a major redesign of Bonneville for the 1992 model year and the SSEi was a new model. So only the SE model was available at the start of the model year production - around July 1991, the SSE model became available after that and then the SSEi model became available late October 1991. Pontiac promotion for the "new" Bonneville, especially the SSEi model featured the white body color. The major auto show preview models featured a white pre-prod model. The magazine ads featured a white model.

On the day of the celebration the Wentzville Assembly was producing a large order for mostly (possibly all) white Bonneville SSEi. This order was placed by the Pontiac Car Distribution Department and these vehicles were to be used as Pontiac Division company cars. So the milestone car was not ordered specifically by the Pontiac PR department, instead they just picked one of the cars that was included in this bulk order of company cars, to be the 30 millionth. The one that was picked might have been destined to go to PR Staff, Reg H. wasn't sure. Was it the first in the batch, the last, a random one, no one remembers. Reg H. remembers the order was placed by either Craig or Shayla Smith from PCDD, they did the ordering for PR staff cars. Neither is still with GM.

The problem was the VIN of the milestone car was not flagged at the time. Jim M. is confident that if the VIN had been flagged the car would not have been accidentally sold. So what happened is that all these cars in this bulk order were shipped off to their various assignments - executive and senior manager drivers, PR Staff drivers, press fleet demo vehicles, all the different things company cars get used for. Then when the next model year cars come out and join the company fleet, last years cars are disposed of I guess by local dealers selling them as "almost new" cars to the general public.

[Keith Seymore]

Mike - we did something similar with the first Escalades.

The VINs and usages were "randomly" assigned, meaning we didn't really pay any attention to who was getting which vehicle.

After the build started, the Cadillac marketing guys noticed that VIN #0001 was going to Engineering, and VIN #0002 was going to Marketing. They asked if we would swap with them - which we did - so that Marketing could have VIN #0001.

K

[aukc]

Reg H. also mentioned that if there was a batch of suitable cars (i.e. a series of white ones) coming down the line to choose from, it would be the plant supervisors who would have picked the one to be designated as the 30 millionth near the end of the line, based on exterior paint quality and best fit and finish. Especially since these were early units, there was a little bit of inconsistency between the vehicles.

[Keith Seymore]

PM sent with info from Muriel Finken.

K

[Keith Seymore]

Mike - PM sent.

K

[aukc]

Originally Posted by projectfolly

Great work Mike!


I don’t have much to offer in terms of knowledge of the event itself, but while reading through your research, I noticed a small detail with regard to Flint Automotive Division or FAD, which I may be able to add to.
Specifically:"Through the combined efforts of Pontiac, Flint Automotive Division (I think this is a reference to the source of the supercharged 3800 engine) and Wentzville Assembly Center employes, the historic Susie took less than three years from concept approval to start of production."
Your reference to the source of the 3800 engine out of Flint is correct, as the engine plant was in Flint located in the complex that was then Buick City.
However, there was another facility in Flint. I worked at Flint Automotive Division in the electrical engineering group at that time. FAD was an engineering center where design and development work was done on the C, H and G body platforms. This included the Bonneville which was an H car. So that could be how the Bonneville could be tied to FAD.
For what its worth, FAD was located at the old Fisher Body plant in Flint on south Saginaw street. This was a very old facility and one of the locations of the “Sit Down Strike” in 1937. In the latter 80s, the plant was converted to what was called the Great Lakes Technology Centre. We moved in to the building as FAD in 1989.
As time went on, the FAD name was changed to Cadillac Luxury Car Division when the Cadillac Clark street engineering facility in Detroit was shut down and the employees and work transferred to Flint. Later the name was changed to Mid Lux Car Division. As an aside, while I was working there, I was given this ’92 Bonneville poster. I pulled the edge back a little bit to show that it is clear in sections, presumably meant to be displayed in dealership windows.

Regards,

Mark

Hi Mark, thanks for mentioning this, initially when I read the Pontiac press bulletin and the reference to Flint Auto Div, I just assumed that must be refering to the 3800 v6 engine which was assembled at Flint. I didn't even consider the platform, which I now realize is an even stronger connection between the Bonneville, Flint and Wentzville.

I'm very interested in learning more about how this all came about, but my understanding is it started with the development of the C platform for the model year 1985 Electra, Park Avenue and T-Type, which the H platform was derived from (same tread & track so not sure what the diff between the C vs. H) which was then used for Bonneville up to the 1999 model year. And it seems the Wentzville Assembly was at that time a new facility built specifically for the C (and then H) car production.

I have no idea what the normal lifespan of a platform is, but 15 years seems very good, between all the Electras, Park Avenues, Lesabres, Bonnevilles, Olds 88 and 98s there must have been alot of C & H platform cars built. If it is of any interest, I went thru my files and pulled together some stuff about the C platform engineering - http://s490.photobucket.com/albums/r...20engineering/

[Keith Seymore]

15 years is very good.... (or very bad, depending on your perspective).

We tended to run the platforms for a long time back then; for example, the old C/K/R/V pickup went from 1973 - 1987 (or '91 for Blazer, Suburban and Crew Cab). Similarly the old G Van started in 1970 and went through '92 (?) or so.

K

[aukc]

earlier this week I spoke with Jeff Freed, owner of one of the 3 '57 Bonnevilles that were at the celebration. I have updated the topic with Jeff's comments. It is reply #13 (if this link does not position you at the correct reply)

http://www.poci.org/forums/showthrea...=1284#post1284