"Tailfins and Bowties" book

[Kurt S]

Len died several years ago in a freak car accident.

[MrLenny]

Len Williamson was my dad. He and my uncle drove from Oklahoma to Detroit, Michigan in the late 80s and made copies of all of the records that Chevrolet had with their permission.
The first set of 2 volumes contained production numbers and options for all passenger vehicles from 1953-1988. He was sent annual updates until 1993 and Chevrolet stopped sending the data. He didn't get rich by any means by selling these books. He just wanted to share the information.

[442w30]

This is pretty cool.....is there a way for us to fill in the gaps of the info we've collected? I have the book but not the complete volumes, as I think mine goes up to 1978 or so.

[Nasblu]

Originally Posted by MrLenny

Len Williamson was my dad. He and my uncle drove from Oklahoma to Detroit, Michigan in the late 80s and made copies of all of the records that Chevrolet had with their permission.
The first set of 2 volumes contained production numbers and options for all passenger vehicles from 1953-1988. He was sent annual updates until 1993 and Chevrolet stopped sending the data. He didn't get rich by any means by selling these books. He just wanted to share the information.

Do you have any copies forsale or the means to reproduce these books to sell them again??

[L72copocamaro]

Originally Posted by Nasblu

Do you have any copies forsale or the means to reproduce these books to sell them again??

If so, they would be in High Demand!

[Kurt S]

Not sure why a book with the production numbers would be in high demand. GM still has these records. And over the years, the numbers have been published in many forms by many people.
The unique aspect to this book is the pages are copies of the originals directly from GM (and it was one of the first to publish these numbers).

Lenny,
So sorry to hear about your father's accident.

[70 copo]

Originally Posted by MrLenny

Len Williamson was my dad. He and my uncle drove from Oklahoma to Detroit, Michigan in the late 80s and made copies of all of the records that Chevrolet had with their permission.
The first set of 2 volumes contained production numbers and options for all passenger vehicles from 1953-1988. He was sent annual updates until 1993 and Chevrolet stopped sending the data. He didn't get rich by any means by selling these books. He just wanted to share the information.

Len was one of the early research pioneers that established a collaborative relationship with GM and his book Tailfins and Bowties is a masterpiece to this day.

[Tarrytown SS427s]

I borrowed the full volume through inter-library loan when I was in college 10 years ago. I was pretty excited to look through it, but I didn’t find much data that wasn’t already widely known. The ECL production trends book offers a much more detailed look at production totals, though a lot of it is hard to understand without an understanding of the ECL codes, and some of the years/models went missing at some point..

[Verne_Frantz]

Steve,
Could you explain a little more about that ECL production trends book you mentioned? I'm not aware of it. It might help me with the research I'm doing now.



Verne

[442w30]

Steve filled me in on the ECL code thing. I asked my contact at the GM Heritage Center if he had heard of such a document, which he hadn't, but he found something that may be it. So when I was in MI in my yearly pilgrimage to the Pure Stock Drags, I stopped by to check out the docs. Yes, this stuff will fill in the blanks for some info that Chevy people are dying to know, but it all needs translating. For some stats, they may correspond to a body code (like L78 Caprices: https://impalas.org/1965caprice/) which makes things easier.

I'm sure Steve can explain it even better.