[StealthBird]

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