'60s Dealer Inventory ordering methods?

[Verne Frantz]

I was wondering what procedure and paperwork was used by dealers in the early '60s to order cars for inventory on their lots. I'm familiar with a typical order form and invoice for a customer ordered car, but what is the paper trail for cars that sit on the lot or in the showroom before finding a buyer?
thanks
Verne.

[Jack H.]

Re: '60s Dealer Inventory ordering methods?

No difference between cars ordered for inventory/spec vs. those ordered for customer specific delivery.... That's why paperwork like recording warranty left the factory in 'blank'...GM/Chevy had no visibility on who would be the ultimate buyer of a given car until the dealer physically completed each vehicle's sale and sent in the original owner paper work.

[Verne Frantz]

Re: '60s Dealer Inventory ordering methods?

Thanks Jack,
It sounds like the only piece of paper a customer buying a car from inventory would not receive would be the original hand written "customer order form".
As for the forms the dealer used to submit an order to the factory, do you know if they were one form per car? I'd guess those forms were never transferred to the buyer....
Were the dealer's orders submitted electronically, or did he just put them in the mail????

Verne

[Loren L.]

There was also the complication in the

dealer's life called Who-ordered-this drop ship of a car that the dealer did NOT order. This was especially true at the end of the model year. I would offer the example of '65 #23540 (Nassau blue coupe -leather, 4 spd, base
motor, PB, PS, posi, A/C & KO wheels) dropped in August at the dealer in Eloy AZ & #23561 (Nassau blue CV, blue/white interior, 350 HP, 4 spd, PS
posi, A/C & TI) dropped on Madison Chevrolet in Scottsdale. These cars MIGHT have been carried on the same truck! The rub was the same - two loaded cars arriving on month before the 1966's started coming in.
(it should be noted that #23540 is still in the hands of original purchaser.)

[Dick W.]

Re: '60s Dealer Inventory ordering methods?

Vern, I would suspect that in the early 60's the orders were submitted via US mail. I do not think that any computer usage was common until the mid to late 60's, and then in just a few dealerships. I do think that some mfg's may have been using a touch tone phone for order verification in the late 60's and could possibly have used it for orders.

[Verne Frantz]

Re: There was also the complication in the

Loren,
I would hope that they "at least" ""dropped"" them on a high volume dealer who might have a better chance of selling it!!

I guess it's surprising Chevy would build loaded cars so near the end of production without a specific order (unless the original ordering dealer cancelled, and Chevy had to "unload" it on someone else)

[Gary Chesnut]

Re: There was also the complication in the

There was a form of electronic communications in the early 60's called Telex (by AT&T) or TWX (by Western Union) that was used by large corporations for transporting orders, etc. When I ordered '61 Impala (409) from dealer the typed order (at least this is what I remember but doesn't make it so) went to Zone office and then onto GM via method unknow. Gary #5895....

[Verne Frantz]

Re: There was also the complication in the

Gary,
You wouldn't happen to have saved a copy of any of the original ordering documents for that car, would you? They only built 142 of them.

Verne

[Joe L.]

Re: '60s Dealer Inventory ordering methods?

Verne----

During the mid 60s to mid 70s, Corvettes were ordered by the dealer using a Corvette Order Form. This was a multi-part carbon or NCR set of documents and it was, generally, filled out by hand. The customer usually did not see this document. What the customer saw was a dealer "purchase order" which is what the sales personnel filled out. The information from this form was transferred to the Corvette Order Form by other personnel.

The Corvette Order form contained a pre-printed number in the upper right hand corner which usually consisted of three alpha characters followed by 3 numerals. This number followed the car throughout the ordering and build process and is found on window stickers and "build sheets". Dealers were allocated Corvettes by the number of "Corvette Order Forms" that were supplied to them. That's why the customer rarely saw them; they didn't want to get these things "messed up" by sales people and customers. The order form had a box at the top that was labeled "Order Type". If the car was a "sold" order, then an "S" was placed in the box. This gave the car a higher build priority and different order processing, but I don't know exactly how this was done.

If a car was ordered for "stock", then the "order type" box was left blank. I don't know how they "kept dealers honest" in this regard, but I suppose that dealers realized that it was in their best overall interest to not declare all cars as "sold" orders. Cars ordered for stock were usually ordered by the dealership personnel assigned to order such cars. Their knowledge was supposed to be utilized to figure out what sort of car would sell at their dealership. During periods of very high Corvette demand and in big city dealerships, the "stock" cars would be ordered "loaded up" so as to maximize profit ("gross", as they call it) on the car. The ordering personnel had a great incentive to order what would sell for their dealership, though; if the ordered too many cars that didn't sell, they'd be fired.

Once completed, a copy of the form was retained by the dealer and the rest was sent to the Chevrolet Zone Office. After processing at the zone office, one of the copies was returned to the dealer. The original (top) copy was sent by the Zone Office to the "Regional Processing Center". From there, I don't know how things were handled.

[Jack H.]

The first dealer direct electronic order....

originated from Penske Chevrolet in Southfield, MI using a Texas Instruments 'Silent 700' Model 742 electronic data terminal supplied by The Reynolds & Reynolds Company in 1975, if memory serves. I was the TI project manager for the Chevy Dealer Terminal project and had the opportunity to watch the first order go through the system.

What was truly amazing was the car that was ordered (I think it was a Nova that was built at Willow Run) that day just happened to hit all the 'skids' in the order entry system just right and it got built & delivered within one week! The word spread SO FAST about this 'miracle' of electronic communication, that Chevy marketing guys had to calm folks down and explain that this was an atypical event that couldn't be guaranteed if/when a given dealer bought into the new electronic dealer order program...

Before the advent of the dealer terminal project, orders were hand written and submitted to the Zone dealership for processing key-to-tape processing with a handful of LARGE dealers submitting orders on mag tape in Burroughs compatible format. The Burroughs mainframe order data bases at the Zone dealers were periodically 'sucked' up by Chevy in Detroit and submitted to the assy plants' IBM mainframes containing silhouettes of on-hand parts exploded to 'can build' configurations allowing each plant to pick & choose from the on-hand orders what it wanted to build.

In the 'good ole days' it was actually possible for a dealer order to sit in 'limbo' for an indefinite period of time awaiting a production plant's 'will build' acknowledgement...

[Dick W.]

Re: The first dealer direct electronic order....

I had one of those "in limbo" cars ordered. I ordered a 69 Caprice, after I found out that no one would insure me if I bought a new Corvette, with every conceiveable option. I waited over 5 months for it to be scheduled. When they finally did schedule it, it would have been at the very end of the model year. Car was ordered in late December 68. I waited and did the unthinkable, I ordered a new 70 P......h Superbird.

[Verne Frantz]

Re: '60s Dealer Inventory ordering methods?

Joe,
Thanks for a very thorough explanation. The "purchase order" was what I was referring to when I called it the "customer order form". I did some digging last night and found a copy of a form, maybe 4"x7", titled "1961 Chevrolet Passenger Car Order Form". It is laid out very much as the Corvette order form you described. It has tiny boxes with option descriptions and a "check box" below each one. Near the bottom are two larger boxes to check; one labelled SOLD and the other STOCK. Interestingly, under the SOLD box is a blank that's titled "customer name", and of course, a box for the selling dealer's name. At the top of the form is a box for the dealer's number. I did not take note of the alpha/numeric order number at the top that you referred to, but I assume it must have been there.
One other thing I found interesting - and I don't know if this would also be on the Corvette order form - was that under all the exterior color and interior color choices, there were TWO lines of check boxes; one row labelled "1st choice" and the other "2nd choice". I guess there was a chance that your new car would arrive in a color other than what you wanted.....

It is very interesting to learn how Chevrolet controlled the number of Corvettes a dealer could order by simply supplying them with a certain number of order forms. I imagine there was a fair amount of politics going on back then by the dealers to have their allottments increased....

Verne

[Joe L.]

Re: '60s Dealer Inventory ordering methods?

Verne-----

Usually, the "purchase order" was just a dealership type of form and varied a bit from dealer-to-dealer. It was the customer's primary "proof" of an order. Basically, when a car was ordered, it was ordered by the dealership. That was/is a commitment on the part of the DEALERSHIP to purchase (and pay for) the car from GM. The dealership was not really obligated to sell this car to any perticular person, though. Even if they put your name on the order copy, that didn't obligate them to sell you the car. I think that's one of the reasons that customers rarely, if ever, were given a copy of the actual car order form.

The form that you described was the counterpart of the Corvette order form for passenger cars. I think that there was a seperate form for most, if not all, models (certainly, this was the case for Corvette). The forms actually changed from year-to-year and usually always had the model year clearly stated on the order form (e.g. "1969 Corvette Order Form"). The earlier forms (like mid 60s and older) had the 2 boxes at the top, one checked for "stock" and the other for "sold". A block below that was for the customer's name for "sold" orders. I think that this was part of GM's "control mechanism" so that dealers wouldn't check all orders as "sold". It was fairly meaningless, though, since the dealer could enter any name there and wasn't actually obligated to sell the car to that named person, anyway. Dealers always hate to order cars for customers. There's just too much chance that the customer will "back out" of the deal by the time the car gets there. Even a deposit has to be refunded in most states, so that "mechanism" is mostly worthless. The dealer wants to get the customer into a car and get it sold and gone, hopefully the same day. That's the only way to ensure that the sale is a done deal.

Sometimes, in the old days, if you ordered a car from a dealer, they tried to "strong arm" you into letting them have your trade-in when you ordered the car. They would give you a lot of pressure tactics by telling you that the car would be worth less on a trade when your new car arrived, blah, blah, blah. Sometimes, if you had to have a car, they'd even offer to let you drive another car (usually a second rate used car on their lot) until your car arrived. This process is known in the car business as "de-horsing". Once you've been "de-horsed", you're pretty much "tied to them" with respect to picking up your new car. For example, they would hold your trade-in value "on account", etc. It's just a way of "making sure" that you actually buy the new car when it gets there.

Anyway, after this long excursion off the subject, the later order forms (like, maybe, circe about 1967 or 68) had a box at the top that said "Order Type" (or some such) and the instruction to put an "S" in the box for sold orders. There was no instruction as to what to put there for other kinds of orders. Also, the distribution of the copies of the order form changed over the years----maybe even from year-to-year. Earlier form distribution provided for some "feedback" from the assembly plant to the dealers; later forms eliminated this.

Some of the order forms provided for more than 1 choice for several things in addition to exterior color. The DEALER was obligated to purchase the car from GM regardless of which of the "optional" things were actually delivered. However, the customer was not really obligated to buy the car from the dealer if they didn't like it (actually, they are not really obligated to buy the car even if it was delivered to the dealership exactly as-ordered).

In the 60s and 70s when Corvettes were on allocation, the dealers often "exchanged" the order forms for a "consideration". For example, one dealer might sell a lot of Corvettes and another dealer a lot of Camaros. So, the dealer wanting the Camaros might get 1 or 2 Camaro order forms in exchange for 1 Corvette order form. Cars were also exchanged after they were ordered in a dealer exchange.