I like the home made sign on the car after it (100,000,001).

Sometimes when there wasn't enough change between model years to stop, purge, and re-start the line, we would do a "rolling model change".

You would build the last 1984 model (or whatever) and there would be a vehicle right behind it that had a home made sign like the above that would say "First 1985".

Sometimes they would leave an empty carrier/space between the two; sometimes not. Definitely no fanfare.

The sign on the hood of the car below, all alone with nobody around, says "First 2013 Volt".

By the way, sometimes on those occasions we wouldn't reset the VINs. The sequential portion of the VIN would keep right on climbing.

K

Anybody else ever think about how they "knew" that was going to be the 100,000,000 (or 1 millionth, or whatever) car produced?

Based on what I know, my guess is they didn't.

If you have more than one, sometimes six or seven, assembly plants pumping these things out at 60 or 70 an hour, for two or three production shifts, how could you know? Sudden scheduled overtime, unscheduled overtime, production breakdowns, material shortages are all unanticipated items that can affect near term production output.

I speculate that they would pick a designated plant, probably the home plant or one nearby (ie, Pontiac Michigan for Pontiac, or maybe Flint Assembly for Chevy). If there was something big going on at a satellite plant, like Fremont, maybe they would throw their hat in the ring. Do some quick math and get close, anoint a specific car ahead of time to be the banner car (and maybe paint it gold), set up the microphones and the press passes and wait for it to happen.

That's how I picture it.

K