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Gm brass hat owned cars
Do brass hat owned cars hold a higher value then other cars? Looking at a car that was a brass hat car for someone at Cadillac. He wants more money then it's probably worth because of this. So I'm wondering what kind of value it adds if any. Input would be great.
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Re: Gm brass hat owned cars
Burt Reynolds Brass Hat Trans AM..yes....Bert Schmuckinsteins car...i dont think so unless its really really special..i mean really special..or extremely rare..
its all a sales pitch...a zone reps car...a high selling dealership owners car..both are considered a brass hat car... now find the publicity car that was photo'd for all the mags..and prove it...well yes it has more value... who does he say it belonged to...Did he say a name...or just trying to bull-crap his way thru the conversation? what generation of car? The late 60s and thru the 70..the broadcast sheet is PINK..does it have a PINK broadcast sheet? if not..how can he prove it...just posing situations..not arguing.. |
Re: Gm brass hat owned cars
This is a 67 corvette roadster L79. Says it was deliver to a William b hempel of Cadillac at the "Gm proving grounds". Says he has docs to prove it. I haven't seen them in person yet. He has the tank sticker, ncrs shipper report and pop I believe. But is the car worth $100 1k 5k or 10k more or none at all since it's not a big Gm name (that I've heard of anyway)
Thanks for the input |
Re: Gm brass hat owned cars
I kinda consider myself a collector and I would not ad any dollar value. Neat but not worth more to me.
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Proteam has a 66 L79 Air Coupe delivered to Joe Pike (Chevrolet brand manager at GM)... Brass Hat car Silver over bright Blue Leather really nicely equipped I do not believe it is priced much if any differently than a similarly equipped car, tons of docs though.
https://www.proteamcorvette.com/Corv...83E/1083E.html |
Re: Gm brass hat owned cars
Brass hat cars were typically well optioned. A well optioned collector car should bring more than a base model. I don't think the "Brass Hat" adds value but the options would.
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----Agree with Gregg and Charley......Bill S
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Thanks for the input. Going to see the car tomorrow and see what it's all about.
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<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: marxjunk</div><div class="ubbcode-body">Burt Reynolds Brass Hat Trans AM..yes....Bert Schmuckinsteins car...i dont think so unless its really really special.. </div></div>
"I'll have you know that my Brass Hat 1974 Buick Apollo was specially painted in Buick Mint Green with yellow full cloth interior at the request of my wife Bernice. And it's Schmuckenstein with an e." Bert Schmuckenstein Vice President for Sales, Midwest Region, 1971-75 Buick Division, General Motors |
Re: Gm brass hat owned cars
lol...now thats funny...i dont care who ya are
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I've never seen the production numbers, but there were a LOT of brass hat cars ordered by employees. My recollection is that the discount was 18% off of the base car and 21% off of the options. I would order a new Corvette, balloon 100% of the cost, and sell the car for a profit after keeping it for 1 year.
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Re: Gm brass hat owned cars
Here is my "Brass Hat". I bought it from the son of the original owner who informed me it was a brass hat car. I am not sure how he came up with that information other than the fact that his mother was an important person with GMAC when they bought it new in late 1968. The car is a 350/350, 4 speed, factory air, power windows, rallys, transistor ignition, fender louver trim. Nicely optioned car but I didn't pay anymore for the "brass hat" implication.
https://www.yenko.net/ubbthreads/pics...8-p1050302.jpg |
Re: Gm brass hat owned cars
Realize that Brass Hat was a dealer term. It never shows up in any GM paperwork.
After 3000 miles of company service, vehicles were either tagged by employees or sent to auction. (Realize that Chevrolet had 1200 vehicles by themselves!) Dealers would buy them and clean them up and advertise them as Brass Hat or Executive vehicles. A lot of the cars were pool vehicles used in the company - well equipped, but not exec cars. But that didn't matter to the dealer. Employee ordered cars are/were not considered brass hat cars. |
Re: Gm brass hat owned cars
Thank You Kurt.
This term is so wrongly used in the hobby today,that now almost any vehicle that was ordered by a salesman back then is being called a brass hat. [img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/rolleyes.gif[/img] |
Re: Gm brass hat owned cars
That's true Kurt. Within the company, we just called them "company cars". They became "brass hat" if they were taken out of company service without a salaried employee claiming them. Remember though, the number of company cars in service at any one time had to be multiplied by 4 for the model year. So, there would be about 5,000 company vehicles for the model year (just for Chevrolet). The best deal on a company car was the "last round" - you would get an additional 10% off plus another 10% if the vehicle got to 10,000 miles. Pool cars weren't always taken out of service in a timely manor on last round, so some of them accumulated a lot of miles.
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Re: Gm brass hat owned cars
Agreed, they were simply executive ordered cars, not "Brass Hat". My dad ordered up several dozen loaded cars over the years when he was a GM executive, usually Buicks, Oldsmobiles, and Cadillacs. He always checked off every option. When he brought each car home, it would usually have about 25 miles on the odometer. He would drive them for 3 months or 3,000 miles. At the end of the period, he had the option to buy the car himself, or he would simply turn it back in and pick up the next one he special ordered. Yes, it was a wonderful benefit of being an executive in the GM organization.
Often my dad would swap cars with another executive for the weekend, or perhaps for a week or two. Sometimes executives special ordered station wagons, and other executives would need one for a road trip for their own family. I recall a really loaded 454 Caprice station wagon we took on a road trip to Florida once. And one day, to the excitement of the entire neighborhood, he brought home a new GMC Motorhome which we took on a road trip to Cedar Point in Ohio. One guy at my dad's plant always special ordered Corvettes, another always ordered turbo Buicks (going back to the 70's). Back in 1974, my dad surprised us one day when he pulled up in a new 1973 Corvette, and another time he came home with a new Buccaneer Red 1974 Trans Am. The Trans Am was his 3 month/3,000 mile car, but since he ordered the car to please my older brothers, he didn't anticipate the fact that when he allowed my brothers to use the car (my dad always let us drive these cars because they were in fact company cars), they were caught at a local airstrip with about 30 other cars at 2:00 am doing some drag racing. That pretty much sealed the fate of my dad bringing home any more high-perf cars, but occasionally he would sneak one home I think because deep down inside he liked the horsepower aspect, he just didn't want "his boys" to get the wrong impression. Mike |
Re: Gm brass hat owned cars
Thanks all for your opinions and input/info. the tank sticker says "cc" in the rpo column and "Chevrolet central..." In the description. And below that is says Gm and then "proving ground..." Another interesting thing is the rpo number for what is looks like is custom floor mats. Is any of this significant? (I have a picture but I can seem to upload it off my phone)
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Ok I think I atleast got a link of the picture in the above link. Thanks
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Final thought - company cars that were purchased by employees after completing their 3,000 miles were sent to a local dealer for delivery prep, title, financing, etc. I assumed that these cars were also referred to as "brass hat" deliveries. Kurt is probably correct though - brass hat may only have applied to the company cars that weren't purchased by salaried employees.
I had occasion to lose a company car when I took a bunch of engineers from the Tech Center over to the Leeds Plant for a drive audit of the new Monte Carlo ('76?). There was a flash flood in downtown KC while we were there eating dinner and my company car floated away! One less brass hat! The entire OK car lot also flooded and totaled hundreds of new cars. |
Re: Gm brass hat owned cars
We did do the "Brass Hat" deliveries on the 3000 mile cars at the dealership. We had another term for these deliveries, but I hate to say, I can't think of it now....but it will wake me out of a dead sleep later tonight!
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I'm pretty sure we called them "PEP" cars at the dealership. We counted them in the total for unit bonuses but there was a flat commission paid because the dealership made very little if anything for doing the paperwork.
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Re: Gm brass hat owned cars
One other point I'd like to make. I often see listings on E-Bay and other places where a car may have 25+ options, and the seller assumes it's a "brass hat" car. Just because the car was ordered with a lot of options does not automatically mean it was ordered by a high ranking GM executive. General Motors also built trains, trucks, buses, etc., and the executives within those divisions also ordered cars. There were thousands of GM executives around the world.
The term "brass hat" was more of a slang term used by dealers when an executive driven car, well equipped, was sold through their dealership. It makes the car more attractive to a buyer when a customer thinks an "executive" special ordered the car, it has a lot of options, and they're buying it at a discount. But also remember, an executive driven car doesn't necessarily mean a babied and pampered car. Mike |
Re: Gm brass hat owned cars
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: StealthBird</div><div class="ubbcode-body"> But also remember, an executive driven car doesn't necessarily mean a babied and pampered car.
Mike </div></div> Perhaps even the opposite: the fleet coordinator had a cartoon posted in his office that indicated company cars "accelerated faster, braked harder and went faster" than regular vehicles (if you get my drift). I was a company vehicle driver for just shy of 20 years. I lost that rank during the unpleasantness of '08. K |
Re: Gm brass hat owned cars
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<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: bergy</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
I had occasion to lose a company car when I took a bunch of engineers from the Tech Center over to the Leeds Plant for a drive audit of the new Monte Carlo ('76?). There was a flash flood in downtown KC while we were there eating dinner and my company car floated away! One less brass hat! The entire OK car lot also flooded and totaled hundreds of new cars. </div></div> Bergy - I lost one, too! I was awaiting a 2011 Volt from the Hamtramck plant, which we were going to convert into a 2012 Opel Ampera for the show circuit (we were scheduled to do a quantity of 20 total). About that same time President Obama was scheduled to visit the assembly plant. The plant planners asked if they could keep my car for a couple days, so they would have a Volt on display during his visit. Everything was going swimmingly until Mr President went rogue, hopped in my car and drove it about 10 feet. Ed Whitacre pointed at it and said: "...that car....Heritage Center". So - my Volt donor vehicle is now sitting on display in the GM Heritage Center. [img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/wink.gif[/img] |
Re: Gm brass hat owned cars
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: StealthBird</div><div class="ubbcode-body">The term "brass hat" was more of a slang term used by dealers when an executive driven car, well equipped, was sold through their dealership. </div></div>
It's a totally made-up term by the dealers. They applied it to anything coming thru the auction - pool cars and exec cars. PEP = Product Evaluation Program, btw. The formal term for giving cars to execs. Not sure when the term came into use. |
Re: Gm brass hat owned cars
<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: Kurt S</div><div class="ubbcode-body">
PEP = Product Evaluation Program, btw. The formal term for giving cars to execs. Not sure when the term came into use. </div></div> Seems like it started around the early 1990's. I made 8th level in October of 1991 and the term was already in use at that time. That was around the same time that we were no longer allowed to specify the option content on our randomly assigned vehicles (I cheated and schmoozed the fleet coordinator with the option content for a GMT400 extended cab short box pickup, 350 cu inch manual 5 speed, black exterior with the argent full face styled steel wheels and P275 tires, which she submitted. That was the last time I was able to pick the options besides drive-and-buys). K |
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One last story (and then I'll move on):
I remember one time I had a Muscle Car review or some other "performance car" magazine laying on my desk; it had a red '70 Chevelle SS/black stripes on the cover. One of the "old guys" (!) wandered by and saw it. He commented: "oh - I drove one of those as a company vehicle one time..." He thought for a second, and then added: "...it got terrible gas mileage". K |
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Keith... [img]<<GRAEMLIN_URL>>/smile.gif[/img]
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Re: Gm brass hat owned cars
The cars I remember delivering were already sold before they even got to the dealership. High ranking execs and managers would order a car to be used for no more than 6 months and no more than three thousand miles. When the car's term expired, the car would then be put into a "pool" of available units. The "pool" was a certain area where only these cars were parked AT the GM plant near Baltimore. The cars were available for purchase either by the exec/manager that ordered it, or by another GM assembly plant worker who "bid" on the car. I use the term "bid" not as we know it by dollar amounts, but by seniority and employment status of the interested buyer. The prices were prenegotiated by GM before the cars hit our dealership for paperwork and servicing. The employees of the dealership were NOT eligible to purchase these cars, and the assembly plant workers were limited to two (2) purchases a year. Often, I would get the same buyer(s) because some people would "order" a car, have the exec/manager drive it for 3000 miles and then come pick it up at the dealership. I really don't remember the exact pricing structure, but I do remember they were CHEAP compared to a normal retail unit. Also, you must remember, and many people don't realize that up until the early '80s, big GM cars had as much as 30% mark-up from invoice to MSRP. You could also order damn near any combination of equipment and/or colors. That all started to changed into the late '80s and early '90s. Now, we're lucky if there is 7-8% on some stuff. The game has really changed.
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<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: DW31S</div><div class="ubbcode-body">The cars I remember delivering were already sold before they even got to the dealership. High ranking execs and managers would order a car to be used for no more than 6 months and no more than three thousand miles. When the car's term expired, the car would then be put into a "pool" of available units. The "pool" was a certain area where only these cars were parked AT the GM plant near Baltimore. The cars were available for purchase either by the exec/manager that ordered it, or by another GM assembly plant worker who "bid" on the car. I use the term "bid" not as we know it by dollar amounts, but by seniority and employment status of the interested buyer. The prices were prenegotiated by GM before the cars hit our dealership for paperwork and servicing. The employees of the dealership were NOT eligible to purchase these cars, and the assembly plant workers were limited to two (2) purchases a year. Often, I would get the same buyer(s) because some people would "order" a car, have the exec/manager drive it for 3000 miles and then come pick it up at the dealership. I really don't remember the exact pricing structure, but I do remember they were CHEAP compared to a normal retail unit. Also, you must remember, and many people don't realize that up until the early '80s, big GM cars had as much as 30% mark-up from invoice to MSRP. You could also order damn near any combination of equipment and/or colors. That all started to changed into the late '80s and early '90s. Now, we're lucky if there is 7-8% on some stuff. The game has really changed. </div></div>
I used to flip Suburbans. I would order one as a "drive and buy" late in the model year, drive it as my assigned company vehicle, purchase it when it came out of service, and then repeat the next year. If everything went well you could break even or make a little bit of money when it came time to sell. The best discount I ever had was 38% off (employee discount plus 7500 miles plus past model year discount). K |
Re: Gm brass hat owned cars
One other trick, from when we relocated from the Desert Proving Ground back to Michigan:
I chose an existing M van out of the development fleet and drove that from Phoenix to Detroit as a GM company owned vehicle. When we got back here it came out of service and I purchased it for my wife to drive (with the corresponding mileage and model year discounts). K |
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