Does anyone know the exact reason that Chevy gives for why the 1969 Camaro production ran late. I have read that there was a strike but since there was more then one assembly plant, was there a strike in both plants? Or was there a strike before the retooling to convert the lines for 1970 Camaro production?

Good question! I'd like to know as well. I have one of the latest 69 Camaros out there. It's an 11A car and the vin is 123479N711330.
Anyone have one later??
See link below for pics.

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69 Z/28 (http://camarogenerations.com/firestone.html)
www.camarogenerations.com (http://camarogenerations.com/)

The reason I have heard for production running late was because GM was having preproduction problems with the new 1970 body style. Rather than stop production of the already successful 1969 model, GM continued to produce it until the kinks were worked out of the new model.

X77D80, I checked out your pictures, nice car. Yours is now the latest one I know about. Previously the latest one I knew was a six cyl 711297

As a side note Chevrolet's back up plan (in case the new Camaro couldn't be ready) was to turn the '69 Camaro models into 1970 (minor, if any changes) models. They even had photo's (1969 Camaros with 1970 Licence plates ready for brochures etc). There was all kinds of law suits over the dealers selling '69 models as '70's. It was deemed necessary at that time to change the styling every two/three years. Ironically the second generation lasted 12 years.

Here's a headline from one of the double page '70 magazine ads that ran:

"New Camaro. Now our competitors know how the captain of the Titanic felt."

This advertisement had artwork as opposed to photography very common back then in advertising.

the closing tag read:

See it, Feb. 26th At your Chevrolet Sports Dept.



[This message has been edited by Joe B (edited 12-07-2000).]

N711922 is the last VIN of record, so yours must be about the last day of production.


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Mark Canning
1969 Indy Pace Car
350/300HP RPO Z11

We just had this same argument over at the 2nd Generation Camaro board, with no resolution. I have heard both stories, but one of my car mags recently stated that it was a strike which postponed the introduction of the 1970 Camaro.

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1976 Type LT (http://www.geocities.com/patgizz/76maro.html) Restification (in progress)

1968 2 door sport coupe (http://members.home.net/brownjs/68camaro.htm)...wife's car!

CHP says it was a strike in this months issue. But that's just what they say http://www.camaros.net/forum/smile.gif ~ John

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1968 RS, 355/4spd/12 blt w/3.55's.www.camarogenerations.com (http://www.camarogenerations.com)

JohnZ, where are you... http://www.camaros.net/forum/biggrin.gif

I remember reading somewhere a long time ago that the 70 was really intended to be a 71, the 69 to run through 70. The impending emissions and the Mustang intro got GM into high gear and the car came out early, not late as we believe. Probably, we'll never know.

As I recall, there were several critical failures during tryout of nearly-completed major body panel dies at Fisher Body; modifications didn't fix the problems, and the first-stage draw dies for the quarter panels had to be redesigned and started all over again. Major draw dies of this nature take over a year to make under normal circumstances, and the die shops had to work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to cast, machine, finish, and run press tryout on the redesigned dies in only 8 months. Chevrolet also had major problems with the front of the fender dies that probably would have delayed the program anyway, but the Fisher delay kept that issue from surfacing. This was back in the days well before the computerized draw die simulation technology we enjoy today, when dies were designed manually from wooden surface models that represented the inside of the metal surface. Computers spot these metal-forming issues today before any die work is started. Back in 1969, the first Texas Instruments calculator was considered to be an electronic miracle, and all the best mainframe computers could do was print invoices and paychecks. We've come a long way...in those days, the level of individual personal computer power each of us enjoy tonight on this forum occupied a three-story building and took about 20 full-time people to maintain. Ah, progress....

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JohnZ
'69 Z28 Fathom Green

Thanks John!

Did I hear John Z correct, We can make our own body panels with our home computer,WOO HOO, any body need any q-panels? http://www.camaros.net/forum/wink.gif

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69 rallye green X77 Z/28,1967 SS 396 Conv. 1974 c-10 454 swb

I really dont care why the kept making 69's well in to 70 I am just glad they did !!! just think if they had stopped the 69 production when they were supposed to the number of 69 camaro's would have been way less than it is and the number of the first generic camaros would be way more !!!!
SCARY ISN'T IT ,,,,,,,

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67 RS 327 deluxe tach gauges , camaro's rule !

[This message has been edited by 67rs327 (edited 12-08-2000).]

From the book The Great Camaro by Michael Lamm "But complications of various sorts crept into the program, and introduction of the new body style had to be postponed until Feb. 1970-thus the 19701/2 model designation."

I posted the same question on the Corvette Forum since the 70 Corvette was also late. There was a strike from April to June 1969 but then like JohnZ said the Camaro must have had additional problems. The strike did not seem to delay the 1970 Chevelle.
Allen71 posted the following:

"Yes, like Mike said, it was the strike in the spring of 69 that pushed everything back. The strike actually began on April 10, 1969 and since this was a GM wide UAW strike, all GM divisions were affected. No Corvettes were produced between April 10, and June 08, 1969, the day the strike was finally settled. GM tried to keep a positive public face on the whole thing and dealers, who tried to act like the strike would end soon, were instructed to keep taking orders. By mid-June with depostis and orders for 1969 model Chevrolet cars in hand, Chevrolet president John DeLorean ordered all cars to be built no matter how long it took. Now there was obviously an additional factor in the delay that we don't know about. It would not have taken until December to build these backlogged cars. There must have been other plans in the works that also contributed to the delay, possibly new for 70 emissions concerns. We know that this was a major factor in the LS-7 not happening for 1970. The dealers must have still been accepting orders for the 69 cars well into Sep or maybe even Oct of 69."

Joe58, Didn't the 69 Corvette run late also? I heard the 70 Corvette was a late intro as well. Would you mind giving out the address for the corvette forum? Id like to do a little snooping around over there....
Thanks!
John

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69 Z/28 (http://camarogenerations.com/firestone.html)
www.camarogenerations.com (http://camarogenerations.com/)

Yes, the 70 Corvette also had a late intro
here is the link to the Corvette Form - good site
http://corvetteforum.com/cgi-bin/Ultimate.cgi

There are 1969 Corvettes with trim tag dates (when the car STARTED down the line) of December 1969. Although I'm afraid that I don't have an exact date for the last day of Corvette production, I can tell you that the last Corvettes (592 to be exact) were built the week ending December 19, 1969 (Friday). 1970 Corvette production began on January 5, 1970.

Joe, Allan's information on the strike dates appears to be right on the money. For what it's worth, there was a Teamsters' strike in 1970 (April 7, 1970 to May 6, 1970) that affected Corvette production as well due to parts being unavailable. I gather that this would be true for Camaros as well... Anyone with any information?

Regards,

Stan Falenski

Interesting info. Regarding the strike, there is some evidence in CRG data that Chevrolet may have planned for this strike, though we're still trying to understand their strategy and how it affected build.

As previously discussed on the CRG forum it appears fairly certain from the data that LOS was shutdown for some weeks starting in early May and restarted briefly in late June to complete (apparently) units already in progress.

However, there is no evidence in the data that Camaro production ceased totally. It appears that Norwood continued to build, even if at a somewhat scaled back level, and component data shows that the major component factories continued to supply new engines, transmissions, and axles throughout this strike period.

Rich Fields
CRG

Continuing off-topic with JohnZs computing power thought - John, you actually understate the case. The laptop I'm typing this on has more computing "power" in terms of speed, memory, and disk than the largest and fastest computing system in the world at that time. Quite possibly, more power than IBM's entire annual production of mainframes.

Of course, most of the power of this laptop is wasted on MS bloatware. http://www.camaros.net/forum/smile.gif

Rich

Rich -

Well said! I remember when I was a lowly Freshman at Michigan in 1958(still using K&E slide rules), we weren't even allowed inside the 6-story building that had "the computer" in it, and not one single course was offered that had anything to do with computers. I think they were more concerned with having enough technicians to keep replacing the thousands of vacuum tubes than figuring out what they could use it for. I still have my semester grade reports and my transcript from when I graduated, and they're all typewritten (remember those?). The K&E log-log Decitrig slide rule and its leather case is history - lost in one of our many moves, I guess. Everything in that six-story building probably couldn't even boot up Windows!

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JohnZ
'69 Z28 Fathom Green

My Muncie records show that the following strikes came about on the following
dates.

4/10/69: Chevrolet- St.Louis on strike.
4/28/69: GMAD (only) plants on strike: Van Nuys, Leeds, Janesville, Baltimore,
Tarrytown and Lakewood.

Strikes ended as follows:

5/14/69: Tarrytown
5/19/69: Janesville
5/23/69: Leeds
5/26/69: Baltimore
6/9/69: St. Louis
6/19/69: Van Nuys
7/25/69: Lakewood

I thought inquiring minds might want
to know. http://www.camaros.net/forum/smile.gif

JohnZ,

Off sub. I still got my K&E. My buddy in the Navy was flunking outa Nuke school until he dropped $425+ for a brand new HP-45 in I think '72. He didn't want to have to go out to sea before he had to leave school. pdq67

Like many historical questions, it appears that the Camaro late intro has no simple answer. From the replies to this post and others, there were problems with the 1970 sheet metal tooling, more then one strike, emission certification problems, and maybe-other issues. In some of the 1969 magazines there are reports of a wild press preview day that Chevy held in the summer of 1969 to showcase the new 1970 cars. The articles do not provide great descriptions but the pictures show a large paved area (possibly the Chevy proving grounds) where there was a road course and a drag strip set up. The 1970 Monte Carlo, Impala, Chevelle, and Nova where there. One Nova had a LT1 in it that may have been a prototype of the 1970 COPO Yenko Deuce Nova. There was a new cowl induction LS6 Chevelle. The 1970 Camaro and Corvette were a no-show but Chevy brought a black/gold stripe 1969 ZL1 Camaro prototype and two ZL1 1969 Corvettes. One white ZL1 Corvette set up for road racing. One red ZL1 Corvette set up for drag racing. The red ZL1 Corvette drag car had slicks, headers, and other mods and ran the quarter in the 10’s. It was a fun day for Zora and Piggins and they probably didn’t mind seeing the 69 Camaro and Corvette run a little late knowing that it was the end of a Hi performance era.

Just have to defend the IBM mainframes! They have come a long way too from the humble beginings back in 69. Now the CPUs are rated in MIPS (millions of instructions per second). The smallest one you can get is around 88MIPS. They scale up to over a 1000 MIPS on in single box(the size of a refrigerator) Then they can be connected together (up to 32 boxes) to create VERY large computers called Parallel Sysplexes.

To give a comparision, the 69 model IBM was less the .5 MIP. The windows machines don't even come close to the computing power of IBM S/390 servers (that's what the mainframes are called now) They cannot even be rated in on the MIPS scale.

PS: If anyone has a Charles Schwab account, all the data from millions of accounts are stored on a 10 box complex of IBM mainframes. When you sign on to the Schwab website and ask for your acount info, you are talking to the Mainframe complex.

Just had to get that off my chest. Kevin

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69' SS-350 ragtop, M20, 3.55 posi. Totally Disassembled & in boxes (I'm working on it!)
69' Hugger Orange Z-21 ragtop 327/PG, Driver

[This message has been edited by KevinW (edited 12-13-2000).]

[This message has been edited by KevinW (edited 12-13-2000).]