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30 Millionth Pontiac Celebration - Research Project
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 |
Wow - it appears that you may already know more about this event than anyone else alive!
:p 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 |
Private Message sent with contact info for Rick Asher.
K |
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. |
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Thanks for the comment about my car, it's heart may be buick, but it's spirit is pontiac, Mike |
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 |
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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. Quote:
Also, thanks for Rick A. contact info, I will send him a note |
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 |
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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 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. |
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/
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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. |
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 |
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.
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PM sent with info from Muriel Finken.
K |
Mike - PM sent.
K |
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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/ |
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 |
conversation with Jeff Freed
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 |
My thanks to Muriel for providing this picture and Keith for getting it to me. This is the first shipment build team with the first shipments of 1992 Bonnevilles, Wentzville Assembly, not sure but I think May, 1991.
http://i490.photobucket.com/albums/r..._scan10269.jpg If there's any forum members who worked at Wentzville at that time, or know someone that did, I would sure like to hear from you, thanks, Mike |
When I first spoke with Jeff Freed a couple months ago, Jeff mentioned that no story about a 1950’s fuel injected Pontiac would be complete without acknowledging the late John Thropp. I did not include the reference to John when I wrote up the summary of our conversation since I had never heard of John and did not know anything about him. I have since done a bit of research and last week I spoke with Jeff again to find out more.
According to Jeff, John Thropp was highly regarded for his expertise in rebuilding, setting-up and the high performance tuning of the early Pontiac Tri-power and Fuel Injection systems. Jeff recalled that whenever John attended a Pontiac event he was constantly in demand by the other Pontiac owners who would seek John’s advice on their Tri-power and F.I. issues. Jeff also purchased some F.I. parts from John, some of which may have been used on Jeff’s 1957 Bonneville that was at the 30 millionth Pontiac celebration, but Jeff still has most of the parts he obtained from John and intends to use them on his current 1957 Bonneville restoration project. John Thropp was a member of POCI and also a member of the Safari Chapter. According to the chapter briefs section of the October 1982 issue of Smoke Signals magazine, a new Safari chapter officer for 1983 was chapter vice president John Thropp. John also had quite a career as a drag racer and was runner up in Stock Eliminator at the 1969 Dallas World Finals driving a F.I. Pontiac. http://i490.photobucket.com/albums/r...ohnthropp4.jpg http://i490.photobucket.com/albums/r...ohnthropp2.jpg http://i490.photobucket.com/albums/r...ohnthropp3.jpg http://i490.photobucket.com/albums/r...johnthropp.jpg Sadly, John past away on November 18, 1994 and the following announcement appeared in the January 1995 issue of Smoke Signals. http://i490.photobucket.com/albums/r...ohnthropp7.jpg It seems appropriate then, that in 1994 at Springfield, Illinois at the last POCI national convention that John attended, he is credited with the white 1957 Bonneville that was awarded 1st place in class H-1 (the gray 1957 Bonneville of Glen Bappe was 2nd). http://i490.photobucket.com/albums/r...ohnthropp6.jpg The announcement regarding John’s passing mentions that he recently had worked on John Denlinger’s first place ’57 Bonneville, so I wonder if that was actually John Denlinger’s car at the convention, but with John Thropp getting credit for presenting it as thanks for his contribution to the car. |
"She Was There!"
Recently I talked with Muriel about her recollection of what it was like working at Wentzville in the early 1990's. This is what Muriel had to say.
“She Was There!” Muriel worked on the 1992 Bonneville in the early design stages when she first came to GM in 1987. She changed jobs in late 1988 when she was promoted but came back to the 1992 Bonneville when help was needed on re-designing the deckled hinges at the last moment. She had 6 weeks to get a design production ready. (Back then it took a lot longer to do things - no computers, no CAE, no rapid tooling or accelerated testing.) Based on her work there she was given the Engineering Manager's job for the Action Center Team in Wentzville for the launch of the 1992 Bonneville. There were 4 main people on the team - one from the plant, Dave Mitchell who has retired recently from GM, Purchasing - Pat Stephens who left GM a couple of years later and another person from Marketing who retired immediately after returning from Wentzville. The Bonneville had a new design for the 1992 model year and was new to the Wentzville Assembly plant. The Wentzville Assembly plant was assembling full size Buicks and Oldsmobiles while the 1991 (and earlier) Bonnevilles were manufactured elsewhere. Preparation at Wentzville for the launch of the 1992 Bonneville began in August 1990. Muriel was based in Flint, Michigan at the time so this required frequent trips to the Wentzville Assembly plant in Missouri. Then from September 1990 until November 1991, Wentzville became her full time work location. She had an apartment and car in Wentzville, flew in from Michigan every Sunday evening and flew back to Michigan every Friday evening. Her work day started at 5:30 AM with a meeting in the body shop and ended at 6:00 PM with a daily meeting every day except Friday. The purpose of involving engineering in the Action Center Team was to achieve better communications between the Flint-based engineering team and production and to enable engineering to more expediently address product and process engineering issues right at the assembly plant. This was the first time strong collaboration between engineering and manufacturing was driven from the beginning of a project. Wentzville Plant Manager Herb Stone was a staunch supporter of Muriel and the Action Team program. The program was a great success – the 1992 Bonneville was the highest quality new car launch GM had achieved up to that time. Regarding the “World Class Quality” video that Muriel appears in, she did not know anything about a video being produced until the day of the taping. The video crew showed up at the assembly plant one day and she was told to be ready in about an hour to be filmed. This was not a Hollywood production with wardrobe, hair stylist and makeup artists. She (and the others on the video) appeared just the way they showed up for work that day. There were no scripted lines and no rehearsing. She was just instructed to say whatever she wanted to about the quality of the new Bonneville and how it was being achieved. The video was intended for dealership personnel only. It was not meant to be viewed by the general car buying public. The Action Center Team program to launch the 1992 Bonneville began in the summer of 1990 with the stationary build. An area was set aside in the assembly plant body shop and the very first Bonnevilles were assembled on a large platter. The regular assembly line was not used for this build; the assembly line was busy building the 1991 model year Buicks and Oldsmobiles. In the fall of 1990 the program advanced to what is called the “slow builds”. This is done using the regular production assembly line. What they would do is start a single 1992 Bonneville down the line, inserted into the line with all the 1991 Buicks and Olds. This “slow build” vehicle would be followed all the way down the assembly line by a team of about 50 people representing all different areas of the assembly process. This was the build team that is featured in the picture with the first shipments of 1992 Bonnevilles. http://i490.photobucket.com/albums/r..._scan10269.jpg This build team would either perform or observe the assembly operations as this “slow build” vehicle progressed down the assembly line. The line would often have to be slowed or stopped as each step of the assembly processes was analyzed by the build team. Obviously this slowed down production of the 1991 model year vehicles. When the “slow build” vehicle had gone part way down the assembly line, it would be pulled off the line so the line could resume regular speed. It would sit there off to the side of the line, sometimes for days, before being inserted back into the line to make further assembly progress. These “slow build” cars once they were completed would go to the proving grounds for various quality, endurance, mileage and safety testing. Some would be used for advance media evaluation and reviews. Some would even be assigned to the engineers and other appropriate GM employees to be used as daily drivers for evaluation purposes. For example, Muriel’s company car back in Michigan was 1992 Bonneville VIN# 6. Her company car in Wentzville was also an early 1992 Bonneville. In the spring of 1991 the 1991 model year vehicle assembly ended and the plant was switched over so regular production of 1992 Bonnevilles could begin. The build team picture features the very first regular production shipments of 1992 Bonnevilles. These were all the SE base model. Regular production of SSE and SSEi models did not happen until later, there was no engineering reason for this (“slow builds” on the SSE and SSEi models had already been done), it was simply marketing considerations to focus regular plant production on the SE base model first. I noticed there were no white cars in the first shipments which I thought was strange since white cars were often featured in Bonneville advertisements, media reviews and press kits. Muriel does not recall there was any problem with producing white cars, the colors of the first shipment just happened to be what was ordered. Also, all the first shipment Bonnevilles appear to be “bubble butts” (i.e. no rear spoiler). For the base SE model the spoiler was part of an extra cost option package so it appears again, this just happens to be what was ordered. Regarding the SSE and SSEi models, I was curious why they went to the trouble of a separate hood insulating liner with the Pontiac SSE logo printed on the hood liner vs. the base SE model with just a plain hood liner. According to Muriel this is thanks to the “father” of the SSE model, which had been introduced to the Bonneville lineup just a few years prior (for model year 1988). She could not recall his name, she though it was Bill and he was the chief engineer for the SSE. He retired right before the 1992 models were introduced. The logo’ed hood liner was something he insisted on. Muriel was aware of the 30 Millionth Pontiac milestone celebration event in advance, since it was mentioned in the regular Plant Managers meetings which she attended. This is where any special events or guest visits would be discussed. For example, at one of the Plant Manager meetings it was mentioned “the CIA” was coming to visit the plant and she was thinking who could this be, was there some other organization that used these initials that she was not aware of, but in fact this was the real CIA since this was during the Desert Storm operation and they were considering temporarily using Wentzville for some military assembly purposes. Everyone was shocked to hear the CIA was coming. The concept that Wentzville may be used as part of a war effort had not dawned on us. Another special event at the assembly plant was when 1992 Bonneville production had just started up. A bunch of Pontiac and UAW executives were invited to the assembly plant and a temporary race track was marked out on the Wentzville parking lot. Well known racing instructor Skip Barber was brought in to give the executives some instruction in high performance driving and they “raced” some brand new Bonnevilles around this parking lot race course. Muriel was not involved in any of the preparations leading up to the 30 Millionth Pontiac milestone celebration event. Regarding the actual day of the event, it was quite the big deal. It was a busier than average day for Muriel so there was not a lot of time to participate in the celebration. In addition to Muriel’s regular daily responsibilities, some Engineering department executives had come from home office to Wentzville for the event, so she had to meet with these executives and help chaperone them around the plant. There was an opportunity during the day for Plant Manger Herb Stone to take Muriel over to one of the 1957 Bonnevilles that had been brought in for event. It was in the lobby and it was the red one (Glenn Bappe’s). Herb told her that he helped build this car. Muriel questioned Herb if he meant that he had worked on other late 1950 Pontiac cars like this one. But Herb claimed he meant this very car. Muriel thinks Herb was just joking - he had a great sense of humor. Herb graduated from Pontiac Central High School in the class of 1957. He started out with GM right out of high school at the General Motors Institute which is now Kettering University. The students there would go to school one semester and then work somewhere in GM one semester. His first work semester was at the Pontiac Assembly plant so he did work on the assembly line where the 1957 Bonnevilles had been assembled, but by the time he got there it would have been the 1958 model year. He was a wonderful person to work with and to know, a great guy and an original character. He left Wentzville and went to Detroit Hamtramck and then to Arlington Texas where he retired from GM in 1999. Interesting story regarding the logo for the Wentzville Assembly plant, the shock of wheat, which appears on the 30 Millionth Pontiac souvenir wine glass and the custom event t-shirt. When GM decided to locate a new assembly plant in the Wentzville area, the piece of land was purchased from a farmer and it was already planted in wheat and was almost ready to be harvested. So after they acquired the land, GM hired the farmer that sold the land to GM to harvest it and GM sold the wheat. Thus making Wentzville one of the only, if not the only, GM assembly plant to generate some income before the plant had even been built. There were no special engineering considerations for the milestone vehicle. It was just a regular production vehicle so there was no reason to give the vehicle any attention from an engineering perspective as it was being assembled. Muriel was there at the end of the assembly line when the milestone vehicle was driven off the line by Pontiac GM John Middlebrook. She was not invited to the reception lunch which was for the executives and special guests, but there was a large cake for everyone else to have a piece. Afterwards she was offered a souvenir wine glass which she accepted. She was also offered one of the special t-shirts that was custom made for the event but the yellow color of the t-shirts did not appeal to her so she did not take one. Her assignment in Wentzville ended very soon after the 30 Millionth Pontiac milestone celebration. The time spent at Wentzville was one of hard work, intense learning, and new friendships. Muriel will always remember it as a positive milestone in her career. |
Mike -
Ressurecting this thread as I was looking for something else. Two points for bringing it back up - a) I have been in Wentzville these last several weeks, building "Integration Build" GMT610 future model product down the regular production line. b) Relative to vehicles "getting away from us" - we had one of our preproduction units get away. These vehicles have a special RPO code that indicates they are non-saleable and should receive an experimental VIN. Out of 72 vehicles we had one truck where (for some unknown reason) that RPO code dropped off the order. As a result the truck was built two weeks ago with a regular (saleable) VIN, processed out the back door and delivered to a dealership in Nebraska as a fleet vehicle. We didn't realize that had happened until we tried to cut that vehicle into our regular production run and the order would not take. It was at that point that a red flag went up. We were able to generate a new order (with the correct RPO string), receive the new order at Wentzville and introduce it into our next day's build to get back on track. K |
Keith, next time you visit Wentzville Assembly, you need to show up wearing a t-shirt like this one
(more photos - https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?...3030066&type=1 ) https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.n...98075527_n.jpg |
Very stylish.
K |
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Reg Harris is probably best known in the Pontiac community for his work throughout the 1990's promoting the very successful Firehawk as Marketing Director for SLP (Street Legal Performance) Engineering. But back in 1991 Reg was Pontiac Manager of Media Relations Sales & Marketing working out of One Pontiac Plaza in Pontiac Michigan. Recently, I had the honor, privilege and thrill of speaking with Reg about the 30 Millionth Pontiac event. One story that Reg recalled about the event was regarding the commemorative t-shirts. Of course, this is of great interest to me. Reg recalls that one day shortly before the event, during his lunch break he went to get a hair cut at a barber about a block away from (what he refers to Pontiac's head office as) the "admin building". As he was getting his hair cut he noticed a faint chemical smell and asked the barber what was making that smell. The barber said it was from the printing shop next door. After his haircut Reg went next door to check it out, turned out it was a small "mom and pop" minority owned print shop, doing things like printing custom signs for church sales, custom t-shirts for local sports teams, etc. Reg asked them if they could do an order of 5,000 custom t-shirts. The owners just about collapsed in shock, in their total business to date they probably hadn't done that many t-shirts. Reg says the Pontiac graphics department came up with the designs for the front and back of the shirts and the print shop went to work. Pontiac paid about $4 per shirt, so the deal was worth about $20,000 to the shop. It came down to the wire, but the shirts were completed the day before the event and were loaded into a van which was driven to Wentzville Assembly the evening before the event. Don't know how many have survived, but this is one "factory original" survivor t-shirt. |
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Recently I came across this display plate, seems appropriate at this time, did you see any like this when you visited Wentzville? more photos ( https://www.facebook.com/30.Milliont...3030066&type=1 ) https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.n...c08dd28723497e |
Interesting coincidence, GM just posted this, shipping to dealers today - https://www.facebook.com/generalmoto...type=1&theater
https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.n...f05f61bd19954a |
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