THE END
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Brings up a point,
What was the last G body to roll off the assembly line? 88 MCSS or Cutlass?
Obviously many different plants produced G's, but what one closed the last and what make was it?
What was the last G body to roll off the assembly line? 88 MCSS or Cutlass?
Obviously many different plants produced G's, but what one closed the last and what make was it?
Whelp, interesting point on that. It was actually the 1987 Grand National that was the final gbody built by GM according to my memory
While the MC and CSC were marketed as '1988' models, that doesn't mean they were built a full model year. Their production ceased 2nd week of December with all other gbodies.
I presume it was the GnX being marketed as the grand national to end all grand nationals and it being a 87 model that had a role, but, the buick regals/grand nationals continued to be built past the traditional model year change over - also to the last day of production in December.
So if you bought a Dec 1st 1987 built cutlass you got a 1988 cutlass Supreme classic. But if you bought a Dec 1st 1987 built grandnational you got a 1987 grand national.
So yes. In the world of GM in the 1980s a 1988 cutlass can be older than a 1987 regal.
I was always under the impression that the last gbody was the 87 GN above.
****EDIT**** The comment below indicates the Dec 11 GN was the last g-body.
Material shortages pushed the production date to December 11, a Friday. Initially, the plan was for Cutlass and Monte Carlo production to follow the Buicks, but Maitland rearranged the schedule with the Grand National at the end specifically so the plant employees would, as Colvin says, "have something to shoot for."
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I had always wondered why a cutlass classic but no 88 regal classic, grand prix classic, or 88 el camino?
The 88 Monte Carlo makes sense.....with there being no FWD counterpart in 88......but what was the thinking behind the 88 cutlass classic? Only thing I can think of is by advancing the year to 1988, there may be more perceived value to the customer.....it would seem like you were getting a newer car.
It's funny this is brought up. I just mentioned this a couple days ago on another thread on this forum. I think ck80 said something about only caring about #1 of 547. Unless you are familiar with this it would make no sense. It wouldn't have to me just a few years ago. I've always wondered about the 1988 Gbody"s and I read an article that explained just that. How there are 1988 Gbody"s when the production ended in '87. And the Grand National GNX was the baddest version and the last to roll off the line. As it moved through the plant all the previous assembly stations moved with the car to watch it near completion. Only 547 were made. Hence the number 547 and ck80's statement "I only care about #1 of 547." 547 is or has been up for aution with practically no miles on it and has been carefully stored since it left the plant.
Thank you Site Admin for the post!
Thank you Site Admin for the post!
The other piece of the puzzle is the poor perception of axing a large number of perceived configurations to a customer base.
The 1988 cutlass could be ordered only with the 307 v8. The 1987 cutlass was v6 standard, and it would be a strange statement, especially in the smog era, to all of a sudden say "well, there's tens of thousands of v6 cutlasses on our dealer lots, but, no, for the next 5 months you can no longer order a v6 cutlass. Confuses customers, dealers, all sorts of people. Nothing to back that up. Just speculation and rationalization.
I'm not sure on the grand prix though. I'm not even sure if they built out an extended year with only about 16000 made in 87 models. But with other performance models, the firebird, the fiero, I'm not so sure they cared much about the outgoing 2 door mid size.
Not sure who said they only cared about 547 in the other post, but not me. You've got the wrong guy.
But you're also wrong about the GnX being last off the line. Last car was a plain grand national, not a Gnx which were grand nationals randomly pulled off the assembly line and sent off to ASC to be tore up and converted on a separate assembly line.
Could be the story you're thinking of was in the ASC workshop, not sure. But yhe last GnX had nothing to do with the end of GMs assembly operations on gbodies.
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My mistake. It could have been someone else. Hope Apologies are excepted. Meant nothing bad by it. And perhaps I need to do a little more reading.
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