[JIMMYM]

I am trying to figure out build date of my gto. History card says invoice date was 11/23/1964. So where is the build date. on my id tag on the firewall under time built is 1C2. what does this mean? Any help would be appreciated.

[Keith Seymore]

The date on the cowl tag is the build week of the body itself.

"1C" decodes as the third week of January. You may disregard the "2" - we don't know what that means.

Unfortunately that doesn't make sense for your November-ish of 1964 built '65 GTO. It couldn't be January of '64, and it couldn't be January of '65.

So - can you post a pic of your cowl tag? Perhaps we are not reading something right - or maybe there is something peculiar going on.

To finish answering your question: the only place I know the actual build date appears is on the build sheet. Shown as the "broadcast date" the final build will occur on that date or the day after. PHS does not have the build sheet; it only exists on/in the vehicle itself if at all.

Here is mine from above the gas tank, as an example. Broadcast date is in the upper left corner.

K

[JIMMYM]

I will take a picture of the id tag and history card and try to post them tomorrow night. thanks

[Baron Von Zeppelin]

See if the color codes on trim tag and billing history are same codes too.

[JIMMYM]

Here is my id plate and history card.

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by JIMMYM

Here is my id plate and history card.

Yep - definitely 1C = third week of January, 1965. You may disregard the "2" as stated earlier.

So - we have a dilemma; your car was invoiced prior to when it indicates the body was built which, of course, is not possible.

Any chance the cowl tag was swapped onto this body? (I see that it was a loose part when you took the picture).

I am hesitant to suggest the other scenario could be the VIN tag was swapped at some point in the distant past.

I happen to know from your VIN (which you neglected to cover in the far upper right of the billing history card) that the VIN would fall nicely in the November of 1964 timeframe, based on other Pontiac assembly VIN/build information that I have collected. So I tend to think the VIN is right and the cowl tag may be funky. Have you had the body off the car? There is a secondary VIN on the frame; there is no secondary VIN elsewhere on the body.

As far as the rest of the cowl tag:

65 = model year
23727 = 2 door sport coupe (post sedan)
PON 1850 = Pontiac Michigan final assembly, 1850th A body post through the body shop
213-B = black interior, bucket seats
A-A = starlight black exterior
E 2LPR = group 1, option E - soft ray glass, all windows; group 2 - L = 4 speed floor shift, P = back up lamps, R = rear seat speaker
5NW = group 5, N = GTO group, W = retractable front seat belts
8-1 = tag number for the specific body side weld fixture used to create the body in the body shop

Any of that make sense, based on what you know the car to be?

K

[Keith Seymore]

We can also decode your billing history card; the numbers of the box, and the numbers in the box represent various option content.

Box 38, number 2 = 382 = GTO option
Box 39, number 2 = Push button AM radio
Box 42, number 1 = windshield washer
Box 46, number 2 = deluxe Wheel disc
Box 47, number 1 = backup lamps
Box 53, number 1 = soft ray glass
Box 60, number 4 = electric clock (not available with rally cluster)
Box 62, number 4 = s belt retractor
Box 70, number 1 = safety track axle
Box 71, letter K = axle code
Box 72, 73 = Tires, code C C = red stripe tires
Box 74 4 = four speed synchromesh trans, wide ratio
Box 75, 75 WT = standard engine 335 HP, single 4 bbl, manual trans
Box 77 W = wide ratio 4 speed manual
A-A-A = black exterior
Trim 30 = black interior

Does this content match what is represented on the car?

K

[Keith Seymore]

The option content between the cowl tag and the billing history card seems to match pretty well.

I wonder if the cowl tag was supposed to be stamped "11C" and one of the "1"s got missed? Or "10 C" and the zero got missed? The timing would work out better if either of those were the case.

One other thing to keep in mind is that there was a GM wide strike going on in this timeframe, which affected the build and throughput of early 1965 model year GTOs.

K

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by Keith Seymore

Box 71, letter K = axle code

Corresponds to a 3.23 ratio.

K

[wmurrell]

Originally Posted by Keith Seymore

To finish answering your question: the only place I know the actual build date appears is on the build sheet. Shown as the "broadcast date" the final build will occur on that date or the day after. PHS does not have the build sheet; it only exists on/in the vehicle itself if at all.

Here is mine from above the gas tank, as an example. Broadcast date is in the upper left corner.

K

Just curious...What is your build date noted on the trim tag? How close is it to your "broadcast date"? I am assuming the trim tag was put on at the beginning of the body assembly process? Is that correct? Do you happen to know how long it took to complete the body assembly?
Bill

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by wmurrell

Just curious...What is your build date noted on the trim tag? How close is it to your "broadcast date"? I am assuming the trim tag was put on at the beginning of the body assembly process? Is that correct? Do you happen to know how long it took to complete the body assembly?
Bill

My cowl tag shows "09 A X", indicating the first week of September 1964 calendar year. Sept 1, 1964 was a Tuesday, as a point of reference.

We are not sure what this first week of September represents, whether it was start of the body assembly, or some significant pay point, or completion. I assume the cowl tag was affixed early in the body build.

Broadcast date, or the date the general (final) assembly information was disseminated to the various locations of the plant, was Friday 9/18/64. Car was invoiced and in our hands on Monday 9/21/64.

Typically, it takes a few days to a week from the time the order is received at the plant until the body is completed; from the time the information is broadcast to General Assembly and the vehicle starts the final assembly process it is usually only a few hours (half a shift) before the completed car is driving off the end of the assembly line.

When my red '87 pickup was built in Flint I caught up to it at 4:30 pm. It was coming down out of paint and starting the trim process. I drove it off the end of the line and to the shipping building myself and left the plant by 1:30 am that same shift.

Just to finish that thought it was sitting at the dealership by 5pm that same day.

K

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by Keith Seymore

Just to finish that thought it was sitting at the dealership by 5pm that same day.

K

I just realized I still had to pay the $525.00 destination charge even though the dealership was 9 miles from the assembly plant.



K

[John V.]

Keith, you missed Sales Code 401, Rear Seat Speaker. Since the Data Plate coded Group 2, Code R, the Rear Seat Speaker (not the Reverb one) was a given. Rechecked the Billing History Card and sure enough, 401 is properly coded.

Without that I would have been very suspicious of a mismatched VIN tag and Data Plate and you know what that usually means.

In this case, I think the explanation is a Factory mistake for the Time Built coding, should have coded 11C, for some reason looks like one of the "1"s was omitted.

This is further corroborated by two things.

1. The Pontiac Plant Data Plates pretty consistently coded the Month with 2 digits, even for single digit months like January. Unless I am mistaken, they would have coded January as 01, May as 05, etc. This wasn't true of all Plants, so a pretty good indicator that 1C is a coding error.

2. Perhaps more importantly, the Lemans Sports Coupe (37 Model Series, 27 Body Style) Body No. count was well beyond 1850 at the Pontiac Plant by Jan. '65. I don't have many '65 records to check, but I do have an early Dec. '64 Pontiac Plant built GTO Sports Coupe with Body No. 23xx. There is virtually no chance that a GTO Sports Coupe built at the Pontiac Plant would have a Body No. of 1850 if it was built in January.


The Data Plate info matches the Billing History Card info for the VIN in all respects. Unfortunately, the '65 Billing History Card contains less info than the '64 records (the '64 Pontiac Plant Manifest record contains the Body No.) so it is not 100% certain.

But in this case, I'm inclined to believe the Data Plate is original to the VIN and the Time Built code was simply miscoded by the Factory.

I am troubled by the fact the Data Plate is loose. If the VIN tag has also been removed from the car, more red flags go up as there has been a cottage industry in selling tags from wrecked or junked GTOs and swapping them onto suitable donor bodies to recreate the original GTO.

Such swaps can often be ferreted out by checking a myriad of body part and glass date codes.

But it appears that there is a simple explanation for the 11-23-64 Invoice Date and the 1C Time Built code, a not uncommon Factory coding error. The car came off the Pontiac Plant Final Assembly line on or about 11-23-64, that is as close to a build date as you are likely to discover. And little doubt should have been coded 11C as the Time Built code.

Hope that helps.

[Chris65LeMans]

Originally Posted by Keith Seymore

I just realized I still had to pay the $525.00 destination charge even though the dealership was 9 miles from the assembly plant.



K

I just got my LeMans' window sticker from PHS today and saw that my destination charge was $82 in 1965. I'm surprised prices rose that fast, and suprised even more that they charged $525 in 1987. That was a lot of cash back then.

[JIMMYM]

There is no doubt as to this GTO being original. It was a Boomershine Atlanta,
Ga demonstrater as was bought by a couple that were friends of mine in September of 1965. It was bought on Friday and i saw the car for the first time on Sunday. I was sixteen years old. In a sad turn of events the husband was killed by a train in Auburn, Ga in November. They had been married five months. I lost track of the wife after 1968. She kept the car until 1996 and sold it to a man who lived five hundred feet from her. He almost immediately blowed up the engine and the car sat for the next 15 years inside. I found this car on Atlanta craigslist in 2011. I went to see the car and Reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a insurance card from 1995 with her name on it. I dont want to be long winded so i am going to leave it at that . At some point i am going to post pictures of the car and tell the whole story.

[JIMMYM]

By the way my name is not Jimmy M that was the friend that owned the car. I used his name as my handle to honor his memory. I am Randy F. from north georgia

[John V.]

Randy, cool story so far. I am known here for being "long-winded", can't help it, just the way I'm wired.

I look forward to hearing more about your GTO.

As fascinating as the story is about how the GTO came to be, I always think that the stories behind each individual GTO really makes them come alive. So many GTOs have an unknown history, we can only guess who owned them, how they drove it, how they loved & cared for it, places the car had been, and so on. Having a GTO where you know some of that history is pretty neat.

[Keith Seymore]

Originally Posted by John V.

Randy, cool story so far. I am known here for being "long-winded", can't help it, just the way I'm wired.

You've been very active the last couple days; must be having a cold snap down there in Fla...

K

[gtoric]

Keith, when did the late '64/ealry '65 UAW strike begin and end?

[John V.]

Eric, I posted what I have uncovered of that strike in this thread:

http://forums.maxperformanceinc.com/...d.php?t=741798

See my post #17, I attached an interesting article from The Militant about the Fremont plant (sidebar, The Militant is the same rag that L.H. Oswald is holding in a famous pic of him).

Note the issue date, 11/9/64 and my comments in that post about it.

Also see my post #26 for follow up comments about the strike.

In summary, the walkout started 9/25/64, the national agreement was ratified 10/25/64. But not all Plants immediately went back to work.

I have seen it referred to as a 38 day strike, that is why I believe all locals were back to work on Monday 11/2, if day 1 was 9/25, then day 39 was 11/2. Many locals might have returned to work on Monday 10/26 immediately after the national agreement was ratified by vote the day before. But have never been able to find specific info for locals like Fremont or any other Final Assembly Plant. And it is possible some stayed out even longer.