Anyone pickup on the Jim Mattison build sheet project in this issue of Corvette Enthusiast? Just says the project is on hold with the exit of GM Kurt Ritter.

 

Can't say that i have, When they start selling Corvette Enthusiast on a roll and in some sort of "soft sensual wipe" format.....then i'll buy again.

Is there other stuff in there appart from adds

 

Tom,

This has been on hold for quite a few months now from what I understand... Corvette Enthusiast is just now getting around to reporting it (in fairness to them, at least they are reporting it). Those involved in the Corvette end of the automotive press could really help by pushing this as a major story (which it is) and putting a little pressure on GM. If more people in the hobby knew about this and let GM know how important the release of this information is, the better chance we would stand of getting this project rolling again.

It's a real shame... Apparently, some type of production information has been found but there has been very little effort by GM to assist the people trying to make it available to the public.

Regards,

 

Tom,

This has been on hold for quite a few months now from what I understand... Corvette Enthusiast is just now getting around to reporting it (in fairness to them, at least they are reporting it). Those involved in the Corvette end of the automotive press could really help by pushing this as a major story (which it is) and putting a little pressure on GM. If more people in the hobby knew about this and let GM know how important the release of this information is, the better chance we would stand of getting this project rolling again.

It's a real shame... Apparently, some type of production information has been found but there has been very little effort by GM to assist the people trying to make it available to the public.

Regards,

 

If you REALLY wanna see a magazine loaded with ads, try Corvette Magazine! Their advertisers are resorting to girls in bikinis to try to get you to look at their exhaust systems.

For example, check out the "Bassani Babe." In the photo, she's pulling down her shorts. (No photo whatsoever of the exhaust system, and her "top" has been airbrushed into nonexistence.) I guess she's getting ready to put on her coveralls so she can install her mufflers!

 

I think that GM was paid-off not to find the paperwork because of all the '67 427/435 fakes that are out there... If GM ever finds paperwork, there will be a lot of unhappy campers in Vetteville...

 

I guess you guys have never heard of Art Armstrong and the research he did?

 

Ironic how they found the "77 & up" dealer invoices

 

Maybe they conveniently found THAT paperwork to put an end to the "cloning" madness.

 

For the ones of you that do not know who Art is, he was employed by Chevrolet in the legal department. He was given the task by Jim Perkins when he was at Chevrolet, to verify, that if in fact, that the older records did still exist. He found evidence of the records that are being released today but concluded on the older records that they no longer existed. Short version of a long story. This was over ten years ago.

 

Not all of the '77+ invoices have been found - about a month's worth of very early production invoices were checked out by another GM department in 1996 and never returned...and my car is in that batch. Ms. Vezina has said she's trying to get them back.

 

Quoted from Corvette Enthusist
Insideview - Ralph Kramer

St. Louis Build Sheets Blues

Next to the whereabouts of a rumored sixth Grand Sport or the absence of arrest-me-red on the C6 color chart, few mysteries fascinate truly fretful Vetteophiles like the matter of the half-million missing build sheets.
The truly fretful are the most obsessive of Corvette nuts. We can't leave well enough alone. We dither over stuff saner zealots skate right by without even lifting.
Take the build sheet mystery. I'm talking about the 500,000-plus documents - one sacred piece of paper for each Corvette ever built at St. Louis - that disappeared after production moved in mid-'81 to Bowling Green. The better balanced among us have accepted the loss and moved on. Not so the truly fretful. Okay so the sheets are gone. That's a given. We're past the denial stage and into acceptance on that issue. But there must be something left somewhere to help us decipher these pieces of the past.
The only St. Louis build sheet I've ever seriously studied is the one thafs glued to the top of the gas tank on my '67. It's a much less crowded docu*ment than the computer-generated version Bowling Green uses now, but it still provides a pretty good word picture of my car at the moment it came off the assembly line. (Two-ply thin-strip whitewalls on a 427/435hp? C'mon.)
Anyway, it was true then and it remains that way today: For better or worse, the build sheet is the ultimate authenticator. Better if it says your L88 started life that way. Worse if it doesn't.
On the line these days at Bowling Green, they stick a copy into a frame cross-member. A duplicate gets filed away. Eventually it becomes a part of the build sheet archive at the National Corvette Museum, from which for aVIN and $30 ($40 for non-members) you can obtain a very nice laminated copy.
There's a bizarre story in how the BG sheets dating back to the '81 start-up were granted immigration status from the plant to the NCM, but we'll get to that some other time.
The build sheet issue was a hot potato long before it burned some of us at Chevrolet 20-plus years ago. From Corvette's earliest days, the sheets were known to exist. But they were seldom acknowledged and even less seldom accessed. Then, in the early '80s, St. Louis decided it was time to rid itself of the flotsam and jetsam of its Corvette era. The word went out that unless Chevrolet wanted to come and get a mountain of files crammed with old build sheets and whatever, they would be destroyed. Looking back, I'm amazed that St. Louis cared so much that it kept them around. Nothing in CM procedure required such lengthy retention.
Anyway, by the time the St. Louis ultimatum became a top-level action item at Chevy, the deed had been done. And hardly anybody at Chevy grieved. Hey, no build sheets, no distracting worries about what to do with them.
Fast-forward to the early '90s. Corvette people were getting pesky. Other CM divisions were starting to release copies of their build sheets. How come Chevrolet couldn't? Or wouldn't.
Jim Perkins, then Chevy's general manager, resolved to finally separate fact from folklore. He assigned ]Art Armstrong Dave Hoffa and Tom Hoxie - three executives familiar to Corvette cognoscenti -to: 1) Find proof of whatever happened in St. Louis. 2) Determine once and for all if there are Corvette-related papers in that mysterious Pennsylvania cave where CM stores vital records. 3) Sift through the five million records in the Leonard storage facility in Detroit. And 4) Track down any other leads.
Months later, Jim got the report: Yes, the St. Louis files are well and truly gone. And no, noth*ing relevant surfaced anywhere else.
Case closed.
But wait. Even as the hobby absorbed the news, the truly fretful remained dubious. How is it possible the mountain of paper generated in a variety of forms on several fronts by the assembly, sale and service of every Corvette built during the St. Louis was all gone?
It's not easy proving a negative.
So Kurt Ritter, who, became Chevy general mar*keting manager in '99, gave Jim Mattison a green light a couple of years later to revisit the issue.
As a young CM engineer 40 years ago, Jim routinely exercised his infamous 409 on Detroit's more competitive streets. His sleuthing skills are top notch, too. Since the early '90s, his company - Pontiac Historical Services - has been handling queries and providing build sheets and other materials under an arrangement where Pontiac pays him exactly nothing.
At Bloomington Gold in 2003, Jim let it be known he was making progress on the Corvette front. The original build sheets may be gone, but he thought various documents done up for transportation, sales and bookkeeping purposes might contain useful info. Although the Perkins searchers had found none, Jim thought some microfilm might still exist.
Then, last winter, Kurt Ritter got reassigned to a new Pontiac/Buick/GMC combine, and quickly quit CM. With him went Jim's charter. As of June, he was still talking with corporate brand communications and CM heritage people about what he does and how he does it.
Meanwhile, the truly fretful dwell in troubled anticipation while the merely zealous enjoy another nifty Corvette summer.

 

BTW, that article came out in the October issue. Are they rehashing old news????

 

I just got my '78 bill of lading this week. Apparantly there is some old paperwork available. An email to the right person was all it took.

 

gliot1, I e-mailed the lady last week, but I didn't get a response. I know it will take up 8 weeks (if I get it at all), but did you receive a response that she received it and will work on it? Or did it just arrive?

 

Dick, Mike, et. al.,

I have read the Corvette Restorer article before. I don't deny what Art Armstrong did or said... He was there, he should know.

Like Art, Jim Mattison was also a long time GM employee who among his other jobs worked in the Chevrolet "Central Office" in the late 1960s processing orders for fleet sales as well as the more famous COPO 427 Camaros 427 Chevelles. Later, Jim also helped put together the PHS program for Pontiac which collected and made those records available to hobbyists. If the source for this information was anyone other than Jim Mattison, I'd probably assume it was false, but Jim has been through this before with the Pontiac information and knows his way around GM as well as anyone.

Apparently, Jim has been working on this project for a while and "something" has been found regarding Chevrolet vehicles (back into the mid 1960s from what I have heard). I don't know the extent of the information or where exactly the project is at this point. Considering the comments made by Art Armstrong, the source of the information is probably not directly from GM... My guess is that he somehow got the shipper information which is pretty much a copy of the "tank sticker" (that tank sticker was about a 15 page carbon that was sent to various locations both within and outside the plant). It's all conjecture at this point though because neither Jim Mattison or GM management are talking.

Last I heard, there was a problem between Jim Mattison and GM management and the project was stalled... Again. Sounds like Corvette Enthusiast is simply reporting old news.

For those who want to do a little reading and maybe get a better feel for what is going on, you can check out this link... Jim Mattison responds personally about 2/3 of the way through the thread.

http://www.yenko.net/ubbthreads/show...ge=2&fpart=all

Regards,

Stan Falenski

 

Yea, it's a shame, but these were just old cars for many years. Can't blame GM for far exceeding archive standards (even if by accident or inattention)... I sure wish I could get some paper on my '73 - had a new gas tank when I got it - no build sheet available...

 

Oooh! Good news! I hope, I hope, I hope....

Since my tank sticker was too grungy to get much usefull info from I'd love to get a copy of some of the original paperwork. I'd pretty much given up but a glimmer of hope still exists....

...Guess I'll put off the plans to build a bogus L88 a little longer...

Again...I'm just kidding...just kidding....

 

Thanks Stan & Dickie...nice updates here and at the Yenko site...BTW, in this summer's Restorer there will be an article on C3 73-82 build sheets. It builds on previous articles by John H and Al G published in the same.

 

I tried to email you back but it bounced. She did not send an acknowlegement, but it just showed up about 6 weeks later. I was very pleasantly surprised as the paperowkr matched the info in my build sheet exactly, so I know it is correct. What this tells me is that GM does have some supporting paperwork in some form. I suspect they have been stalling because the amount of staff it woudl take to honor requests. I believe one day soon they will miraciously find the old missing paperwork. To save expense, GM could at least turn this stuff over to NCM and let them handle it.