"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.