1st gen Camaro Production Information

Yes I said CAMARO!  But I posted in Off Topic Discussions!!!

I found some of the production information interesting.  Some of it correlates with what we understand about the Dearborn production.

A couple of things I learned:

I did not know 1969 Camaros continued to be built until November of 1969!  This was due to some assembly line and/or tooling issues with the changeover to the new bodystyle for 1970.  I guess that is where the 1970 1/2 year model descriptions originated for some of the first 2nd gen Camaros.

And I found it interesting in how the Camaro was first introduced.  They were obviously chasing the success of the Ford Mustang.

http://www.camaros.org/geninfo.shtml

Ray

Good research Ray. Doesn't hurt to know that Ford wasn't the only one to suffer "Glitches" concerning new vehicle launches. The following info is from one of my GM/Camaro friends. He said it was a quarter panel  stamping issue where the metal was splitting, drawing up, and also wrinkling. The dies were repaired but he said the fix did not work and the panels were worse. The fix was to completely redesign the dies and just take the hit on a already past launch date. Since he is one of a group that claims that 1969 was the last year GM built a decent Camaro, the delay on the 70's didn't hurt his feelings! The 70's, now called 70 1/2,  finally made it to the dealers around Feb/March 70. Guess that makes a lot of the 70-70 1/2 cars low in numbers and rarer. Then about the time GM was starting to catch their breath and maybe have a good 71 launch, they got hit with a 67 day strike in Sept 1970, right at new car launch time!! Ouch!! 

Hopefully Ford was able to take advantage and sell a lot of the new for 71 Mustangs!!

There was another strike in '72. When it was resolved about 1100 semi-complete Camaros and Firebirds were crushed as there were too many issues with finishing them.  I saw a photo of a bunch of them stacked two high while waiting to be crushed.  I wish my '78 was a '72 (not a crushed one though).

Yeah it took Chevy C=Cheap H=Heavy E=Equipped and V=Very Y=Yseless  about 2 1/2 years to "Catch" up with the Mustang...which in fact they never did!