Gm brass hat owned cars

[Mr70]

Bert I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

[marxjunk]

i see what your sayin'

[bergy]

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.

[travlnz28]

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.

[Kurt S]

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.

[Mr70]

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]

[bergy]

That's true Kurt. Within the company, we just called them &quot;company cars&quot;. They became &quot;brass hat&quot; 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 &quot;last round&quot; - 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.

[StealthBird]

Agreed, they were simply executive ordered cars, not &quot;Brass Hat&quot;. 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 &quot;his boys&quot; to get the wrong impression.

Mike

[Motorhead848]

Thanks all for your opinions and input/info. the tank sticker says &quot;cc&quot; in the rpo column and &quot;Chevrolet central...&quot; In the description. And below that is says Gm and then &quot;proving ground...&quot; 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)

[Motorhead848]

https://flic.kr/p/K5NMxL