[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by Ben M.

Seriously. No one cared back then, it was just another heavy manual that became obsolete and in the way at the end of the model year when the plant switched over. Occasionally you'd get a guy who probably thought it was neat and kept a book or a lazy guy who didn't throw anything away ever, but 9 out of 10 sets probably went in the dumpster.

I used to have a 6' tall by 5' wide filing cabinet full of engineering documentation, design notes, and assembly manual instructions for building the high voltage sections of the lasers I worked on, and I had the same thing at a scientific research institute for the high voltage systems I was responsible for there. The only reason things were saved is by fluke from a manager who didn't like to toss things and this one retired engineer who accidentally brought a few 5.25" floppies of stuff home with him when he retired in the mid 90's and was still alive. When I was let go at the laser company all of it went in the trash, gone forever because the lasers were no longer in production and it costs money to keep obsolete documentation around. Upper management's & legal's decision to "only retain things that are functionally relevant and destroy anything older than 12 months" probably didn't help the cause out.

This happens all over the world in all engineering companies. That cars have a rather rabid following from us is more an outlier and oddity than the norm.

Yes - and that's even though cars are my life...

Same thing with the styling sketches and drawings. Those were supposed to be destroyed, too. The only reason those still exist is because guys like Bill Porter and Paul Deeson smuggled them home.

Assembly line build sheets, too. Those were supposed to be destroyed but it was easier to leave them in place and build the car up around them.

K