"Brass Hat" Car?

[bergy]

In the late '60s and early '70s, in order to qualify a "company car" - an employee had to be an 8th level department head or higher (up through unclassified). A salaried supervisor was 5th level, so you had to get a few promotions before being assigned a company vehicle. Most of the cars that were driven on a daily basis in company service by a department head were already spoken for by an employee who went to the personnel department and specified the car & options. Cars that were ordered by an employee and not assigned to a specific department head wound up in the "pool". Pool cars got driven by everyone and anyone (theoretically for company business) and generally got the snot beat out of them. So, it was best to get a department head to agree to drive your company car rather then have it assigned to the pool. If there weren't enough orders by employees to populate the company vehicle program, the personnel department would simply order additional unspoken for cars. These cars were usually really loaded with options so that they would be easy to sell (or brought good $$ at auction) when they were taken out of service. So, it was the pool cars that frequently wound up at auction.

[Keith Seymore]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: bergy</div><div class="ubbcode-body">In the late '60s and early '70s, in order to qualify a &quot;company car&quot; - an employee had to be an 8th level department head or higher (up through unclassified). A salaried supervisor was 5th level, so you had to get a few promotions before being assigned a company vehicle. </div></div>

That was part of my strategy for starting out as a production supervisor immediately after graduation: I hired on as 6th level, giving me a head start over my counterparts who went directly into engineering positions (as 5th level). As a result I &quot;skyrocketed&quot; (lol) to the coveted 8th level position. Unfortunately by that point we were not able to select the option content of our PEP vehicles - they were assigned randomly by the fleet office.

The exception would be the &quot;Drive and Buy&quot; program. We were able to specify the content of the vehicle, drive it for the allotted time period (3000 miles or 7500 miles) and accrue the associated discounts with the intention of buying it when it came out of company use. I bought quite a few Suburbans at 38% off (mileage plus past model year discount).

That lasted for me from 1991 through the unpleasantness of 2008.

K

[Keith Seymore]

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Keith Seymore</div><div class="ubbcode-body">The exception would be the &quot;Drive and Buy&quot; program. We were able to specify the content of the vehicle, drive it for the allotted time period (3000 miles or 7500 miles) and accrue the associated discounts with the intention of buying it when it came out of company use. I bought quite a few Suburbans at 38% off (mileage plus past model year discount).

K </div></div>

There is no end to the trickery. When we moved back from the DPG I chose an M Van from the development fleet. We drove it back to Michigan as a company owned vehicle and then turned it in for &quot;final disposition&quot;. Once it was available I purchased it for my wife's use, complete with the mileage discount (as a result of the trip) and past model year discount.

We also would order development vehicles with specific content with the idea of (keeping an eye on them) and buying them after they came out of service. This, of course, would not be condoned if the fleet people or engineering management knew that's what we were doing.

K