The fender emblems on our '69 are above the top of the wheel well lip. Baltimore car. The fender either went into a fixture that drilled the holes or a jig clamped to the fender and the holes were drilled manually. May have been pierced. Any way you look at it, you aren't going to get the holes an inch or two out of position no matter what the operator had for lunch:
Buried in the GM manuals are dimensions for where these holes are supposed to be. When I bought our COPO Chevelle, I had the dealer install the SS emblems with the Corvette 427 number underneath. They put everything way low. Dumb on their part and dumber on my part for getting it done. Kids will be kids. These cars are 38 years old and unless you have owned it from new, there is no real way of knowing what they have gone through. In salt country, the front fenders had rust holes behind the front wheel in three years. Been there. An awful lot of these cars would have had their fenders repaired or replaced long ago. Might have been what happened with this car. The purists will want to change 4-5 things under the hood. The expensive part being the exhaust manifolds and smog system.