Last Van Nuys Car
 

Hi guys!

I am the lucky person who owns the VIN 70008 Camaro. I just spoke with Scott Moyer and he asked me to join the site if I had a chance. Scott will have full access to my documents as soon as we figure out a good way to do this.

I will be happy to answer any questions you have, but It will probably be early morning or occasionally during the day as I am on my work computer.

Its great to find this message board on the Third Gens!!

Leonard Stevenson

Your a lucky guy to have a car like yours. I mean i have a low mileage 91 Z L98 and i love it! I couldnt imagine having one with only 126 miles and the last one built! Amazing.. Over the last yr i read a couple things on this site about you, how there was some guy from Iowa who owned the last thirdgen built..How much did you pay for it back in the day?

Dealer invoice price + $100. - $500 Rebate = about $20,000.
I will have to look back at the invoice to give you the exact number.

Leonard

Leonard,

Great to have you aboard. Tell me, why are you selling?

I'm glad you joined, Leonard. Welcome to TGO.

Retirement!!

Actually, I have not done anything with the car(car shows, conversations, etc.) for several years. If a museum is interested, it would be a good way for many people to see the car.

I still have a 69 Z28, 94 Z28 w/595 miles, 99 SS Convt. hugger orange w/white top and white leather w/710 miles and a 02 SS w/17 miles. I have these to play with to keep me in the Camaro mood.

Leonard

3rd gen is the best one out of all those! Besides the 69 Z, those both are the same. You have a sweet collection

im wondering who drove it for 126 miles.. how many times did you drive it? was 126 miles the distance from the dealer :D ? Did you ever start it up occasionaly or did u just let it sit? Can you even let a car sit that long and expect it to run? I bet it hasnt even been broken in :) just some questions....

how did u get the oppurtunity to get the last one?

how much would you like to see the car sell for?

thanks

Hey I need to see this car if I can before you sell it. Its amazing that you live in Ankeny and so do I and I never heard about it till now.:thumbsup:

if i were you i would part with some of thoes 4th gens in stead of the 3rd gen :D my question is how were you able to vist the factory when they were building the car. did they ask you if you wanted to go or did you request it. its a very nice ride. BTW whats the reserve on the car if you dont mind me asking

I drove it for the 126 miles. I drove it to a couple Central Iowa Camaro Club Meetings and to a car show. That is it. I do start it up frequently. It is not broken in yet!

I sent a letter to GM and asked for the last car.

A lot......I doubt it will sell with my reserve price.

Aaron, I think you are safe that you will see it. I don't think it will sell.

After Chevrolet agreed to let me have the car, I had to get permission from GM to visit the factory. They originally did not want me there because of the possible bad atmosphere in a plant that was closing. The opposite happened.....the employees were happy I was there and they treated me great!!

Leonard

How did you come up with the $50,000+ pricetag on this car?was it appraised for that?Did you have to pay any extra for getting the last one?Also do you have any other pics besides the ones on ebay?

I set the reserve price where I will be happy if it sells and happy if it doesn't sell. I did not pay any extra for the car. I looked last night and the total I paid including sales tax, title and license fees was $19,575.00

I have lots of pictures and will be working with Scott to get them posted.

Truly an awesome car...congratulations, you have quite the collection. I envy you to be able to keep theses cars with such low miles. I would want to drive them all. Welcome to TGO. :thumbsup:

I don't even know where to start! The car is amazing in itself, it's the last one, you were at the factory, it has less than 130 miles, and it's signed everywhere!! What else could you possibly ask for??

Great car. I hope we see many many more pics of it!

Do you have some pull with GM?Just wondering how you could just request the last one and get a museum piece that easy.BTW,awesome car!

I spent alot of time on the phone to find the "right person" and then I bugged him to death to let me have the car. There was also some luck involved......right place at the right time.

Welcome to the boards Leonard!

Are you sure you want to sell your piece of GM history? I know if it were me and I had that car I would definately hold onto it.

Will you help us out by allowing one of the senior members to archive whatever pictures, articles and videos you may have?
We know what you have is irreplaceable and it would be hard to let the stuff go, even for a few days. Maybe if all the members with PP accounts were to donate we could come up with a good size deposit for you to hold onto while the media is digitized, I would be willing to donate what I can.

Hell, I'll buy him a really nice scanner and mail it to him!

You will not need to donate any money. I see there is a Board Member from my hometown. Maybe he has a scanner and we can work out the scanning of the documents.

I have a new Dell printer/scanner at work but as you can see by the photos I scanned, they did not come out very clear. It is a Dell 942 All in One Printer. How do you know the clarity/quality of it?? It can't be too good as it was only $25 with a new laptop.

Leonard

Usually Dell slaps their name on a Lexmark printer... so I would guess that it isn't very good quality!

EDIT: Just looked it up, and yes it is a Lexmark.

I have access to scanners worth thousands and I have some serious video encoding hardware, neither of which can leave my sight but I can make use of them both.

Since almost everyone and their pet dog owns a scanner, that part would be better left to someone closer but if I had the tapes I could produce some very good compressed video which could be offered for download.

What is involved in sending tapes to Canada? Are they damaged if they get X-rayed? I would think someone in the U.S. must be capable of doing this.

Leonard

Possibly make copies of the tapes and send them up to Canada? I've sent magnetic media before without issues over the boarder.

Originals would produce better results but a copy would suffice for our needs. So long as it is a copy of the original and not a copy of a copy of a copy. VHS loses alot of quality when you start making copies. :(

The tapes should'nt get damaged. I've bought VHS from the US many times without any problems.
I don't think they x-ray shipments shipments such as these (especially if they are sent by USPS media mail). If they deem a shipment suspect they just open it and inspect it.

If you can't find anybody closer I will gladly do it, just email me.

I don't know the person that lives close to you, Leonard, but all I can ask is whoever helps get all this documentation scanned, imaged or photographed needs to do so at the highest resolution possible. We should have 1 set of copies at the best resolution and then have some Photoshop experts size and clean them up. We should also ask that whoever gets involved with the original documents, should:

1. Not get fingerprints on the pictures. The acid will start to deteriorate the pictures faster.
2. Not wrinkle the documents in any way
3. Use only high quality scanners/cameras to get the transfers.

The reason for all this is simple. Better duplication equipment makes for clearer images and we want to preserve the original document in the same way we get it from Leonard. We can make this a team effort, but TGO is the name behind this, not any individual. We need to be professional about this. I will do the Photoshop if needed. I just need the images. We can probably do this with thumb drives. Let me know what I can do.

That's a perfect idea. Use USB thumbdrives thru the mail!

I as well can resize/crop/touch up pictures if needed.

My Suggestion
 

Since this is such a valuable piece of third gen history. I would suggest that thirdgen.org form a corporate entity and issue shares of stock. Each share costing (say $25.00) once the total share of stock reaches the purchase price of the car. Each member would own a "share" of the car. Within the corporate documents rules would apply, like no one drives it, where it is stored, buying out shareholders, majority rules, all the details. It sounds complicated, but it really isn't.

Re: My Suggestion
 

I'll take 25 shares! :D

Seriously. If we can get 250 members to buy one share at $500 bucks apiece, we would generate $125,000. Should be enough to cover the cost of the car as well as maintain storage for a while. Part of the fees of being a member would be monthly payment for storage fees. If after a certain amount of time, the majority members decide to sell the car, the shareholders would get a proportionate share of the proceeds.

i like that idea..i'd hate to see it sell to someone who would think of really driving that car

that is an excellent idea. why dont we form a corp to buy LeonardS out than he buys a share and continues to be a part of it and he can store it since he is the orginal owner of it.

Leonard, you may want to get in contact with Floyd Garrett in Severville Tennesee, he has a Musclecar museum that gets a ton of people in which may be a good place to show the car off.

pics:confused:

its up for sale on ebay right now if you want to see pics ot the car

I doubt that a car of this herritage and mileage is really gonna be bought up by someone who would consider it a daily driver..... Someone who pays over 50grand for a 3rd gen is gonna buy it to do what Leonard did with it.....

If you are interested I have a HP all in one copier, scanner, printer, when I scanned some stuff for my self it turned out pretty good, I can scan a page from a magazine and email it to you scott to see if my scanner will be high quality enough for all of us to be able to read, if you want and if it is ok with leonard.

I'm just thinking that a 300 or 600 dpi scan will be sufficient. Most web based scans are at 72 or 100. These are fine for a 640x480 picture, but I think we need them to be as clear and large as possible. Then they can be resized for the web. If a digital image needs to be taken, then we want them look as clean as possible and again be large enough that they are readable. We can resize them for the web later, but at least we will have a large original print or scan to start with.

I just don't think a camera phone will give us the quality image we are looking for. That's why I stated a good scanner and camera at a high res is best.

Another thing to think about is the process of saving the picture. JPEG images reduce clarity considerably by compressing the image. We should scan them in and save them as a high quality image. Maybe someone with more skills than me can make a recommendation. I save all of my images in Photoshop as a .psd file, but I don't know what everyone has as an option.

Question for Leonard S:

Do you recall what the last Pontiac was off of the Van Nuys line?

Thanks :)

You can see a Firebird on a few of my photographs. I did not look at the car but as I recall it was a black Firebird coupe. Just because it was the last Firebird, does not mean it was the last VIN. The factory had cars they called "Stuffers" which were cars that were pulled off the line on their carts because of problems. These cars were then "stuffed" back in the assembly line when the problem was fixed.

The factory only built base cars on the last day. I did not see any other Z28's or Trans Ams.

The VIN 170007 Z28 that they mentioned on one of the other posts was not the car in front of mine. I do not know what day that car finished.

Leonard

Hi Leonard and welcome to the board! Sorry to be chiming in so late. I believe VIN 170007 GM kept that car for historical purposes and probably went to one of those storage warehouses in Detroit
that has been mentioned. As I remember I ran a warranty history on that car some years ago and it came up as an in house order and wasn't sold to a dealer.

David, you are wrong. The car is in my garage!! You are right that it was an in house order but it was sold to Schildbergs, Inc. in Greenfield, IA which is where I ordered the car.

Leonard

Leonard, I thought your car was 170008.

BTW, sorry I haven't been in contact with you to follow up on our initial conversation. I have been very busy and my internet was down. I work for the cable company and both my cable and internet are served by my work!! Great how they take care of employees, huh. Have you been able to work out any details with Aaron on the documentation copying? Let me know. He might be a good resource since he lives near you.

Scott, brain fade.....you are right. I actually have another car...my 94 Z28 that ends in 007. It must be too early yet!!

Leonard

welcome
 

aboard TGO sorry i'm a couple weeks behind all,scott we try and keep the network alive but sometimes....... (i'm a maintenance tech for a charter system in TN):thumbsup:

Re: Last Van Nuys Car
 

Hello,

I understand this thread is 9 years old, but whatever happened ? this thread just ends ...

Did anyone ever archive all the documents ?

did the car ever get sold ? or does the LeonardS still own the car ?


This is way to interesting to just let go, I joined this forum just to inquire about this. I've owned 3 third gens in my life, and currently own a 5th gen