I started this thread over at Camaros.net, but though I would get a more even keeled discussion here. I'm not interested in any one particular car, I'm only interested in the process. How did pilot cars go from a pile of sheetmetal to a finished vehicle. Any discussion even about how and where other lines of the same time period were built is helpfull to the discussion.
GM says that there were 49 "F" Cars built at or for the Norwood Plant, and 3 at or for the LOS plant in late May early June of 66 by Fisher for GM. GM documetation says that there were, 27 cars for sales, 17 for engineering, and 12 for manufacturing, and 3 misc (?)cars scheduled. (note that this adds up to 57 pilot cars - more than is accounted for in their build totals (the sheets with tag numbers and option lists).
33 of them had show paint applied, one (no. 6) was shipped in primer to engineering. Drivetrains varied from 6 cylinders, 283's, 327's and 350s and a mixture of power glides and manual transmissions, and there was a mixture of convertibles and coupes.
The following dates relate to the cars and their introduction to the public.
Fisher builds car bodies from 5/21/66 (earliest promised delivery) to 6/6/66 (latest promised delivery) at which time they were delivered to GM.
Pete Estes announces the Camaro name in a 14 city closed circuit televised conference on June 29 1966, cars had no name up to that point and thus no emblems or name plates.
Chevrolet holds a sales conference in Detroit 8/22-8/23/66. Where at least one Camaro and possibly others were presented to the Chevrolet Sales people.
Major advertising campaign occurs at the Proving grounds 9/28-9/29/66 with 25 Camaros present and 100 members of the press invited to drive the Camaros. Probably can assume that these are mostly the 27 cars noted in the assembly documents that say they were destined for the sales organization, probably most of them with show paint.
Camaro released to the public 9/29/66.
We know of at least 3 and possibly 4 Pilot cars that still exist, VIN N100001, with NOR body number 860. Body numbers NOR 10 NOR 13, and NOR 31. NOR 10 and 13 have 05B Norwood Build Dates, NOR 1 and 31 have 09B dated tags.
OK lets start with the where.
Where were these cars actually assembled for "delivery to GM", and what does delivery to GM mean. If the cars were practially hand built at the small pilot assembly line at the Norwood (and/or LOS) plants, wouldn't they already be in GMs hands? Norwood (and LOS) was in full spring production mode on the plant internal assembly lines, so its not even conceivable (at least to me) that they would assemble pilot bodies on the main interior line, with no tooling, parts or anything else needed to built these cars.
What was the capabilities of the pilot assembly line at Norwood? Could they weld a complete body tub together from loose stamped panels? I would assume they could paint the bodies, and assemble them onto chassis' and install drive trains.
Lets leave it at getting a Camaro body assembled painted, etc and delivered to GM, then we can move on to where the cars went from there. Comments, other questions, answers?