While I was talking with LARRY the other night we were discussing what happened too a bunch of our old friends, their cars and stories we heard in those times,yes many were in magazines we read, related to cars and it occurred to me, that many of you newer guys might learn a few things, if I repeated them.
now the first two deal with an engineers way of looking at things and while I don,t remember all the details or people involved, you'll get the basic idea.
and some of these stories have been printed in magazines
(1)
the first story is about the early show car version of what would become in time the 1968 corvette, it seems , that some executive at CHEVY went on a fishing trip and caught a large SHARK at about the same time frame as the first third generation corvettes were being planed and prototypes produced,
well the executive drops of the stuffed shark, at the custom body shops paint department, and tells the paint department tech guys to exactly match the corvette to the sharks color, shading and basic color scheme, after painting the car several times and finding the results never came out as an exact match , the paint tech department guys were getting a bit frustrated, during lunch one talked to an engineer, and the next morning the car was presented to the executive placed next to his stuffed shark, it was an exact perfect match in shading, color etc. , it was only years later the paint tech guys admitted, they had found it far easier to paint the stuffed shark to match the car.
(2) it seems that, back in 1964 Pontiac offered the GTO option, which upgraded the 1964 tempest from a 326 cubic inch engine to a 389 cubic inch engine!
a few trim pieces and a few other upgrades that resulted in a very noticeable increase in sales that Pontiac could not ignore.
well at some point in the promoting and advertising process some advertizing guys made some claims that the basic GTO would have a difficult time achieving, but it got published.
as a result a few car magazine types wanted to do a test drive of the new GTO and a few pontiac power train engineers were told by the executives in both advertizing and the power train departments that the car better be tuned and tweaked to provide the stated performance.
After a couple days of testing and tuning ,the car just was not quite making the stated performance goals, but when the magazine guys tested the car it gave the stated performance and was a HUGE success, in fact it got rave reviews by the magazine, it was only years later that the engineers in charge of the project admitted that a late night engine swap to a high compression 421 engine, with the tri power intake , from the 389 and larger 421 exhaust manifolds rather that the stock 389 that was listed MIGHT have had something to do with the SLIGHTLY better results
http://www.edmunds.com/pontiac/gto/history.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontiac_GTO
now the first two deal with an engineers way of looking at things and while I don,t remember all the details or people involved, you'll get the basic idea.
and some of these stories have been printed in magazines
(1)
the first story is about the early show car version of what would become in time the 1968 corvette, it seems , that some executive at CHEVY went on a fishing trip and caught a large SHARK at about the same time frame as the first third generation corvettes were being planed and prototypes produced,
well the executive drops of the stuffed shark, at the custom body shops paint department, and tells the paint department tech guys to exactly match the corvette to the sharks color, shading and basic color scheme, after painting the car several times and finding the results never came out as an exact match , the paint tech department guys were getting a bit frustrated, during lunch one talked to an engineer, and the next morning the car was presented to the executive placed next to his stuffed shark, it was an exact perfect match in shading, color etc. , it was only years later the paint tech guys admitted, they had found it far easier to paint the stuffed shark to match the car.
(2) it seems that, back in 1964 Pontiac offered the GTO option, which upgraded the 1964 tempest from a 326 cubic inch engine to a 389 cubic inch engine!
a few trim pieces and a few other upgrades that resulted in a very noticeable increase in sales that Pontiac could not ignore.
well at some point in the promoting and advertising process some advertizing guys made some claims that the basic GTO would have a difficult time achieving, but it got published.
as a result a few car magazine types wanted to do a test drive of the new GTO and a few pontiac power train engineers were told by the executives in both advertizing and the power train departments that the car better be tuned and tweaked to provide the stated performance.
After a couple days of testing and tuning ,the car just was not quite making the stated performance goals, but when the magazine guys tested the car it gave the stated performance and was a HUGE success, in fact it got rave reviews by the magazine, it was only years later that the engineers in charge of the project admitted that a late night engine swap to a high compression 421 engine, with the tri power intake , from the 389 and larger 421 exhaust manifolds rather that the stock 389 that was listed MIGHT have had something to do with the SLIGHTLY better results
http://www.edmunds.com/pontiac/gto/history.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontiac_GTO
