1954 GM in a bygone era...

[Eric J.]

[Howard K.]

What a neat picture--THANKS. *NM*

[John H.]

Re: 1954 GM in a bygone era...

Eric -

In the 60's, those tables full of mechanical teardown displays (less the bodies) were laid out, down to the last nut and bolt, in the main east-west hallway that ran the length of Chevrolet Engineering; unless you never left the front office portion of the building, you couldn't miss them.

At the Proving Grounds, they bought at least one of every competitor's product every year, ran them all through the 50,000-mile durability schedule, then tore them down and displayed them as in your photo. The less successful ones (the Renault Alliance comes to mind ) were tagged as "hoist queens" due to frequent failures/part replacements during the schedule.

[Chuck S.]

Re: 1954 GM in a bygone era...

Yep, those two bodies at the top outside, close to the aisle appear to be 52 Ford four door sedans; the other bodies appear to be Chevy or GM products. That flat head six on the table gave me a clue...must have been a Ford or Dodge product.

I came from a family of Ford people, and had a 52 flathead Ford coupe in high school. That experience single-handedly turned me into a Chevy guy for the next 25 years.

I had no idea that car companies did that sort of thing on the competition's product.

[Gary C.]

Competitive evals still done today

Don't know about the car business, but can tell you for sure that competitive evals and patent theft are rampant and big time business today. The Chinese have mastered these techniques quite successfully with acquiring our defense secrets big time! Gary....

[Eric J.]

Re: 1954 GM in a bygone era...

The funny thing about this picture is it was scanned from a direct marketing piece that went out in 1954. The caption talked about examining wear on Chevrolets to improve the quality. Turns out there are more blue ovals in the picture!!! I now see the flat head 6! Thanks for the feedback. Eric

[Eric J.]

Re: 1954 GM in a bygone era...

The funny thing about this picture is it was scanned from a direct marketing piece that went out in 1954. The caption talked about examining wear on Chevrolets to improve the quality. Turns out there are more blue ovals in the picture!!! I now see the flat head 6! Thanks for the feedback. Eric

[john daly]

Re: 1954 GM in a bygone era...

GM still performs these teardowns....it's called Vehicle Assesment and Benchmark Activity....I was there years ago and except for a lot more wiring on the tables it looked quite similar to that picture....of course engineers don't wear suits to work these days...thank goodness

[john daly]

Re: 1954 GM in a bygone era...

GM still performs these teardowns....it's called Vehicle Assesment and Benchmark Activity....I was there years ago and except for a lot more wiring on the tables it looked quite similar to that picture....of course engineers don't wear suits to work these days...thank goodness