[Keith Tedford]

I worked in the car plant as a tool and die maker from 1976-1983. The west end of the plant had the "A body" body shop and general assembly for Chevelle and Monte Carlo. The east end was for the full sized "B body" Chev and Pontiac. There was a separate Chassis plant as well where the chassis and drive train were assembled and married to the body. In the '60s they built Chev, Pontiac, Olds, and Buick. Now that would have been a tooling nightmare that I wasn't around to see. They even had a small Corvair line at one time. In the '60s, when it would have been interesting, I was in the up town stamping plant learning how to be a tool and die maker. Every year we built a full set of hood and fender dies for the full sized Chev and Pontiac. That ended in about 1970 when model changes became a matter of grille and tail light changes. The body metal basically stayed the same until the 1977 model change. After the year's production run, the dies were greased up and stored in an outdoor compound. Periodically, dies would be brought back into the plant and runs of earlier model fenders would be run on weekends to suppply the GM warehouses. Once the dies weren't needed any more, apprentices, along with a crane operator, were sent out to the field to strip the dies and bring the die shoes in for re-use. How things have changed. Now the dies are just as apt to be built half the way around the world.