[north]

Latest data mining effort of my listing (1,086 1969 GTO's) :

Color preference (most common first):

Judge:

1...Carousel
2...Liberty
3...Verdoro
4...Starlight
5...tie: Paladium, Matador
6...tie: Cameo, Midnight
7...Warwick
8...Mayfair
9...tie: Expresso, Antique, Limelight, Crystal
10...Goldenrod (extra cost)
11...tie: Burgundy, Windward (extra cost)
12...Champagne

Non Judge:

1...Verdoro
2...tie: Matador, Liberty
3...Midnight
4...Limelight
5...Antique
6...Warwick
7...Expresso
8...Crystal
9...Palladium
10...Cameo
11...Mayfair
12...Starlight
13...Burgundy
14...Carousel (extra cost)
15...Windward (extra cost)
16...Champagne
17...Goldenrod (extra cost)

[north]

Most common options (first is most common):

Judge

1...AM radio
2...Power Steering
3...Console
4...Power Brakes
5...HD Safe-T-Track (non HD STT is not included, it is a separate option)
6...4 Speed-Wide Ratio
7...Hood Tach
8...Remote mirror
9...Tinted Glass-All Windows (not including windshield only tinting)
10...Rally Gauges-Clock

Non Judge

1...Power Steering
2...AM radio
3...Console
4...Power Brakes
5...Rally Wheels
6...Auto Trans
7...Hideaway Lights
8...Tinted Glass-All Windows
9...Remote Mirror
10...Cordova Top

The difference in the two lists is interesting, obviously the Judges attract a more performance oriented crowd so the options lean more that way, also the inclusion of the pattern cars are responsible for the remote mirror and tinted glass making the list.

The non Judge list indicates that while some basic things like rally wheels and consoles were common to give a sporting look to the cars the interest in performance was much shallower as indicated by the TH400 making the top ten. Because this list is heavily over weighted with convertibles (eight non judge hardtops produced for each convertible but my listing is two to one), this is why Cordova top wasn't much higher on the list (54% of non Judge hardtops had a cordova top).

[Diego]

Would have expected Mayfair Maize to have been rarer on a Judge, especially compared to Limelight Green.

[north]

The first few colors of both lists seems to match my impression from decades in the hobby. The exception is matador being so high in the non judges. I don’t recall seeing that many over the years.

The one color that surprised me in both lists is Palladium silver. I can recall so few silver GTO’s. Perhaps it went out of style in the 70’s and so many got color changed. Another possibility is that silver paint in that era was notoriously bad for durability, it cracked and faded like crazy. Which maybe led to a higher scrapping rate.

One color that didn’t surprise me is champagne, dead last of the standard colors on both lists. I can count on one hand how many champagne GTO’s I’ve seen in 40 years. However it was a very popular color on the GP and somewhat popular on big cars.

[Jcs]

Originally Posted by north

I decided to enter the dealer codes into my 69 GTO PHS collection (about 840 GTO's including 330 Judges at the moment.

I'm about a quarter of the way through the process and some interesting stuff has come up...

Dealer Order Numbers (DON)

A few observations, the low figure (2 or 3 digit) DON seen on Judges are only for Zone ordered pattern judges and seem to follow very roughly in chronological order with the VIN by plant.
Later Judges (zone or dealer order codes) have typical 5 digit DON
Zone ordered regular GTO's also have regular DON's. So seems like those two or three digit DON's were exclusive to early pattern judge orders.
Zone cars invoiced after the regular 69 model run had ended have a blank box where you'd normally see the DON.
The regular DON numbers don't indicate any pattern but they seem to be originated by Pontiac rather than being the number each dealer assigned to his own orders.

As I enter the other plants codes to my spreadsheet I'll post here if I see a change in the patterns mentioned above

I’m new here and was just reading up on 69 GTO pattern cars and I believe I have a pattern car with DON #34 on the build sheet. Car shows to be built in Arlington. Great info you guys have here.

[johnta1]

Sounds great!

Can you post the PHS?

[Jcs]

Sure. Here is a picture of the phs and build sheet for my Judge.

[johnta1]

Thanks!

Nice to see the buildsheet.
Yours is a pattern Judge #34.

[tom s]

Loved my 69 gold judge!

[north]

I’m away on holiday but I’m pretty sure that this car is new to the listing.

I’m not sure if there is a definite answer but My best guess based on studying my PHS’s is that the order number was the sequential order that model year received by the zone office in question from any dealers in that zone or from the zone office itself for zone inventory.

The pattern judges seem to have used a unique order number sequence but again the number would be the sequential number of pattern judges ordered by the zone office (requested by dealers or by the zone itself).

[Jcs]

Originally Posted by johnta1

Thanks!

Nice to see the buildsheet.
Yours is a pattern Judge #34.

Great. From what little research I’ve done it looks like Arlington actually built the least number of pattern judges or maybe judges in general?

[north]

The Pontiac plant didn’t build any pattern Judges (they didn’t build any 69 GTO’s until late March or early April - probably because of all the Grand Prix’s they were producing).

I don’t think anyone knows exactly how many Judges were built in each plant but I probably have enough Judges in my listing that it’s probably indicative of which plants produced more or less.

I’ll have a look when I get home in two weeks but by memory Baltimore had the most and Framingham the least.

[north]

Originally Posted by tom s

Loved my 69 gold judge!

Nice car! I’ve always thought Antique Gold was a sharp color for Judges in particular. Something about the stripe that really sets off that color!

[will slow gto]

Some great options on Jcs’ pattern Judge.

[John V.]

First time I've seen this thread, always interested in obscure data like this one on Dealer Order Nos.

I will go back through the thread to see what conclusions you've drawn but I have long thought that the Dealer Order Nos. were taken from pads of PMD Order blanks that were distributed to each dealer. My '64 records show 5 digit DONs.

From what I can tell, each dealer got order pads numbered in the range from 70000 to 99999.

I actually have one '64 record that shows DON 70000.

All '64 records show the 1st digit as 7, 8 or 9.

On some of the '64 records (the 4 A body Plants have 3 different PHS record formats so the records from each Plant differs from one another), the box containing the DON is identified as CUSTOMER REFERENCE, the Dealer No. and the DON are listed. Meaning, the DON is useful to the Dealer to identify his orders, not something that PMD made use of by my interpretation.

I do have one '64 GTO record that shows a 5 digit DON but it is actually 3 digit preceded on the form by two zeroes. It was one of the "Zone Announcement " GTO convertibles that were among, or were, the earliest '64 GTOs built in Sept. soon after '64 production commenced and sent to each Zone and lent out to people like newspaper auto writers for promotional/publicity purposes.

There is no Dealer No. identified for this particular build so obviously an "in-house" order generated by PMD and likely explains the odd DON.

Realizing that no dealer would be selling 30,000 cars in a year, perhaps the pads were distributed in pads of say 1000 to the Dealers and it was just luck of the draw as to the range of nos. (still within the 70000 to 99999 overall range) that a particular Dealer received. Optimistically, perhaps each Dealer received 2000 Order blanks, numbered sequentially. There were dozens or more dealers in each Zone so the sequence of DONs given to any particular dealer would likely be duplicated to multiple dealers even within the same Zone.

Obviously if you could find every order submitted by a single dealer, you should likely find DONs starting somewhere within the 70000 to 99999 range and incrementing relatively chronologically to whatever DON represented the final order submitted for '64 by that dealer. Surely some DONs would be missing as Order blanks may have been spoiled or written up but never submitted for whatever reason.

At the end of the year, I assume the remaining pads were tossed, not usable for the next Model Year.

No idea if the '69 DONs follow the same pattern as what I've seen for '64 but figured I'd share it in case it helps.

I know a few posters here have had direct or family experience as PMD dealers. IIRC, it was one such poster that posted something that helped me understand the DONs, connecting them to the Order pad blanks though I can't recall the context, too long ago.

[north]

Sounds like it changed after 64 because my 69 model year listing indicates that the dealer order numbers (DON) were in rough date sequence by zone office. Dealers from a given zone seem to all have DON’s that follow sequence regardless of assembly plant. The spread of the numbers from start to end would be much too high for a dealer to order and by year end the big dealers would have much higher DON’s than the small rural dealers but the listing shows no sign of this.

As for the special 2-3 digit DON’s on the pattern Judges they are also clearly in chronological sequence by each zone office.