77 Trim Tag date

[Steve Junkersfeld]

The Trim Tag on my 77 has an approximate build date of L23 (July 23rd). I happened to notice in the NCRS birthday book that the 23rd was a Saturday! I am all but certain that my tag is original. Did they run Saturday shifts occasionally - possibly near the end of production? Has anyone seen a Saturday date before? Thanks Steve

[Joe L.]

Re: 77 Trim Tag date

Steve-----

Definitely; St. Louis did run on many Saturdays. In fact, for 1977 it's a virtual certainty that a lot of Saturday shifts were worked. That's because, for 1977, a LOT of Corvettes were built---almost 50,000. This was one of the highest build years in Corvette history----behind only 1979 and 1984.

Consider that in 1977 Corvettes were being built in an obsolete factory which was anything but a factory optimized for efficient manufacturing. Still, they managed to get almost 50,000 Corvettes out the door. A second shift and frequent Saturday production was almost certainly necessary to accomplish this. This would have been especially true for body production which was the most labor and time intensive part of the manufacturing operation. That was the "bottleneck" in Corvette production, and I'll bet that a lot of bodies began production or were completed on Saturdays.

For model year 2002 and working in a modern, efficient factory and working a LOT of Saturdays (but no second shift), they were hard-pressed to turn out 40,000 Corvettes.

[Steve Junkersfeld]

Re: 77 Trim Tag date

Joe, Thanks for the quick response - and the bit of history. The 75/76/77 technical manual provides a little info on approximate build dates and indicates that the actual build date would be a few days later depending on weekends and holidays. That got me interested in the saturday date.