[thornbe]

Saw an earlier post about the 68 strike and wanted to bring it to the table again.

I have a 68 Chevelle Concours Sport Coupe. It has an interior from a 69 Skylark GS Custom (door pannels, front and back seat, headliner). I am very interested in the effects of the strike so I can document and verify the setup of my Chevelle. I have seen other peoples 68 Concours's and they are all different. Due to the Concours end of the production year timing, the use of any available parts makes sense. My trim code also denotes "TR 765-980B" Could this represent the Buick interior?

Sorry to ramble on. Any thoughts about the strike?

- Tim

 

[BULKSS]

Tim not to long ago I parted out a 68SS the interior had a full length rear seat with one piece rear door panels. I posted an ad here and got alot of calls from people asking about the rear seat and door panels the dicription one person kept giving me was different he had a 2 piece door panel with a filler to the seat ( atleast thats what i think he was describing ) anyway after some research on his part he came back and told me about the strike and believed his interior was substituted with 1 from a Buick during the strike since then I have heard that a bunch of times MIKE

 

[elcamino]

If the plant was on stike then no cars would have been built, Chevy, Buick, Olds, Pontiac. The stike might have been at one of the suppliers not the assembly plant. I have read that they established a sales record for the Chevelle in 1968 with over 400,000 units and the SS396 production was about the same as 67.
Assembly line workers could have installed the wrong parts by mistake. It happens, I have seen new GMC trucks with Chevy interior name plates and vice versa.

[This message has been edited by elcamino (edited 12-19-98).]

 

[68396]

Several years back, 10 to be exact,I saw a pair of NOS taillamp bezels advertised for a '68. I called and was shocked to find that the guy was asking $600.00 for the pair. When I asked him why he was so high he told me that this was the first pair that he had been able to find for years. He went on to further explain that he had been an engineer at GM in '68. He said that all of the available parts went to build cars on the line as the vendors for many of the parts went on strike. Because most, if not all of the available parts were used, substitutions may have been made to keep the lines running as long as possible. He also told me that because of this, repair parts for any '68 GM product were usually in short supply.

 

[rstoltz]

I have a 68 Concours; my grandparents bought it off the lot in Carson City, NV, on June 12, 1968. It was assembled in Fremont, CA, on May 15 of the same year.

The salesman told my grandfather that the Concours coupe was a model introduced mid-year, and that the Concours featured a distinct interior package. The interior, according to the salesman, is what constituted a Concours over a standard Malibu.

I have all the documentation for my Concours since day one and my car was bone stock when I bought it off my grandparents (for $1.00!). The buildsheet and the window tag seem to back up the salesman's claim. The buildsheet lists the Councours option -- RPO ZK7, which is also my CA license plate -- and details the Concours interior extras. Likewise, the VIN number clearly indicates that my Chevelle is, indeed, a Concours.

I have read several times that the 1968 Concours coupe is a product of the GM strike, but I have a real hard time buying that argument. Especially since I have a sales brochure, window sticker, buildsheet, VIN, data plates and salesman's claim that all say otherwise.

If the GM plant was grabbing Buick parts and slapping them into Chevelles because of plant strike, why did Chevrolet do so much marketing prep and documentation beforehand for the Concours coupe? Also, if the Concours interior is actually from a Buick, what exactly defines a Concours coupe and why does every Concours coupe have a VIN number that clearly identify it as a separate model?

Sidenote to thornbe: Every 1968 Concours coupe I have seen (I've seen only 6 or so) has had the same interior package. In fact, they are identical. In the past year I saw both a restored and unrestored 1968 and 1969 Buick GS Custom at a car show. The seat patterns in each car were similar to a 1968 Concours but not the same. The Buicks also had a rear courtesy light on the lower side of the rear interior panels. How did the Concours' you saw differ?