Gorgeous car! Gota be a blast with that manual gearbox too!

 

Great looking Camaro that I bet is still a blast to drive. The light blue looks fantastic, which of course I'm partial too. Thanks for sharing!

 

Beautiful car!

Your sig mentioned you were a former GM employee, and walked the car through assembly. Did you work at Norwood, or Van Nuys? If you worked at Norwood, you may have known my uncle, who worked there for several decades.

 

I worked at Norwood! I fixed my signature..thanks! I knew many people, however most had nicknames back in the day..lol and some we really never knew their given name. Ex: Ratchet, Grey Beard, Duck, Pearl..haha crazy times.

 

That's pretty neat. My uncle is Bobby Gosnell..it was a big plant, and you probably wouldn't have known everyone...

We had a '67 SS/RS when I was growing up, his marks were under the hood. He took us for a tour of the plant in '69...I still remember that very well. Wish I had a few "samples" of the production they did that day.

 

would love to know what it was like putting these cars together back in the day, it's a story for another thread I'm sure though.

 

It was hard hot work, but if you were a car guy...what a blast. Not like todays air conditioned factories with their "Lift Assist machines". Good for quality and better working conditions, but we did it the old fashion way. Lift it your self, crawl in the car, contort your body in whatever way was necessary. Yea we had our problems, but black and white, asian etc... we all got along and got the job done. I remember when we bombed Libya in 86. All the radios were on, and we all cheered for America. We had preachers that sang and preached at break. Practical jokes played on each other, like putting skunk oil on peoples cloth gloves while they were on break..haha. Probably have a policy against all of these now. One person would buy a newspaper, read a section and when finished, put it in the car and pass it on down to the next person who wanted to read it. You would read it and put it in the car and send it on down. There was a job in the Trim Dept. where you just cleaned out all the paper or trash that was in there..lol We'd tape signs on the car to ask your buddy about lunch plans that worked on down the line somewhere. Who needed smart phones. 8-9 hours looking at Camaros amd Firebirds. I always took my breaks in one of the finished cars, playing with the Pontiac Digital dash that was built then on hiatus, then built, then on hiatus... dont think they ever mastereed that. I also would keep a running tally off the build sheets of where all the cars were going on a particular day. Penn. got a lot of F cars for sure. What a bunch of great people though. Was a sad day the last day of production for sure. If you want a good ol read, get a copy of Rivethead. Most GM plants were very similar to this. It was a world of its on inside those walls.

 

Wow that's fascinating, thank you so much for that

 

What a great story, thanks for sharing.