78’ Pace Car Production Start Date

Hey all.

Not trying to beat a dead horse here. I know this topic has been discussed ad nauseam but I want to get your thoughts. Maybe get some questions answered or clarify information.

I think most enthusiast believe that the 1978 Corvette Pace Car’s production started on Saturday 18 March because that is when the first cars rolled of the line.However; I read recently that corvette production took 22 hours per car, start to finish. Since GM worked two 8-hour shifts a day back then on weekdays and one 8-hour shift on Saturdays that would mean it took two and three fourths shifts to complete a car. And that would put actual production starting on Friday 17 March, first shift not Saturday.

I’ve also read that GM worked either every other Saturday or every Saturday per month except one during production “to keep up with demand”. That one shift was an 8-hour shift. Anyone know anything different? So far I can only see where Corvettes were produced on two out of seven Saturdays during the production run.

Does anyone know if GM worked on 24 March, Good Friday? Again from what I’ve seen GM assembly plants including the St Louis Corvette plant, did not typically observe Good Friday as a paid holiday under the UAW contract at the time. So to me that means they worked however; in tracking production codes, I have yet to find any cars build that day.

Lastly, each car only received their Data Tag once it was totally completed. If there were deficiencies that needed to be corrected, the car went to a repair line and then once repaired; it got its tag for that day. This is why some build dates are out of sequence.

Why does this matter? Because depending on the number of Saturdays they worked (I can document two 18 March and 1 April) and Good Friday, the production run was between 35 and 40 days. This will help us figure an average number of cars produced per day. Not exact, but it helps narrow the information down to how many actual cars per day.

Jeff

I talked with Hunt4cleanair, a couple of years back and he explained to me about the trim tags. He said this is why some of the cars trim tag date is out of sequence. Makes since to me as to why some cars trim tags are out of sequence. Could there be another explanation? The cars were repaired in the Impala repair facility. This is also where the factory applied decals were applied. I agree “The trim tag date is understood to be the "approximate" build date, not an absolute. We mostly refer to the trim tag date as the "body build date", as that is a more accurate description.”

There was only one holiday during the production run and that was Good Friday. In the original post I went into the Good Friday thing and I concede I haven’t found any cars with that trim tag date. Trim tags I have found make it look like they did not work on Good Friday or the Saturday after. PC #0797 is the last, in a line of car I’ve found with a trim tag of G23 and #0803 is the first car in a run of several that have a trim tag date of G27. I don’t know about the five cars between these two, but it doesn’t look like any were built on the 24^th, 25^th or 26^th.

As for labor strikes, the UAW did not strike during the production run, although there could have been line failures or parts shortages but keep in mind that all 6,502 cars were build in 35 to 40 workdays.

As for “the ones used for the actual race program, festival cars and such”. There was only four PC’s at Indy in 1978, two were non-PC VIN Per-production cars and the other two were VIN’s 0001 and 0002, both with trim tags of G18 or March 18^th, 1978. All the festival cars, parade cars and the like were white 1978 Chevrolet Camaro Z28’s and Monte Carlo’s. GM also supplied Trucks for speedway operations, both pick-ups and utility trucks.