The process of assembling Corvette bodies and painting them is probably the most labor-intensive part of the whole Corvette assembly process. Plus, it's where the real art of Corvette-building takes place. The rest of the build is pretty much purely mechanical. As we know, the St. Louis Corvette plant was very limited space-wise and also a pretty decrepit facility from the get-go. That's more-than-likely why Chevrolet outsourced a lot of the body production during the C2 years when, due to much increased popularity of the cars, production numbers took a significant jump over the C1 years. Some say that the outsourcing of much C2 body production to A.O. Smith was the result of some sort of "reward" to that company for some other "favor" they did for GM. I kind of doubt that, though. For one thing, I doubt that A.O. Smith would have considered this kind of low volume production work very much of a "reward". For another, there had to be something in it for GM and I think that something was related to a recognition that the body shop at St. Louis was not capable of handling the increased production and doing it in anything like a quality manner.
The thing I can't figure out, though, is why they did not continue this into the C3 years? C3 production went way up with a peak of almost 54,000 cars during the 1979 model year. This was almost TWICE the number of cars built during the 1966 model year, the highest production year for any C2 (and half of those bodies were built by A.O. Smith). The quality of Corvette body and paint work, always pretty marginal, notoriously suffered during the C3 years as we have discussed in other recent threads. I have no doubt that this was due in large part to the inadequate facilities and capacity at St. Louis. So, if Chevrolet ever needed to outsource body and paint, they needed to do it in the C3 years. But, they did not. I wonder why? Maybe neither A.O. Smith nor any other firm wanted to do it?
The thing I can't figure out, though, is why they did not continue this into the C3 years? C3 production went way up with a peak of almost 54,000 cars during the 1979 model year. This was almost TWICE the number of cars built during the 1966 model year, the highest production year for any C2 (and half of those bodies were built by A.O. Smith). The quality of Corvette body and paint work, always pretty marginal, notoriously suffered during the C3 years as we have discussed in other recent threads. I have no doubt that this was due in large part to the inadequate facilities and capacity at St. Louis. So, if Chevrolet ever needed to outsource body and paint, they needed to do it in the C3 years. But, they did not. I wonder why? Maybe neither A.O. Smith nor any other firm wanted to do it?
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