The 1963 Corvette Sting Ray being assembled at the St. Louis Plant 

You got that right, what a temptation.

Anybody, anytime, who has a Corvette, any year, who does not have a smile on their face when driving up the road in their Corvette is not a real human being. All Corvette owners know about this little secret!

i had a Pantera that definitely put a smile on mine....

I've never owned an older corvette. But the image of that body style has a permanent photo in my brain. And I can bring it up when ever I want. And I get a smile too.

Na….Chevy Vega is….

Jaguar XKE.

That is a great memory.

That's the commitment it takes to make that work. Life gets in the way of doing that so often, its almost impossible to accomplish.

If I owned that car I would worry about it all day and all night. But I don't have one and I don't worry about my old beater one bit. I guess I can claim I'm lucky I can't afford one.

@@jasmith1867 Yep; I'd at least be paying through the nose for one helluva insurance policy.

To be fair , the spray rooms would have had extremely powerful extraction . Did you notice the spray dust was being forced down . But it would have had risks no doubt. .

@@johndavey72 I own a down draft paint booth. It's better than painting in your garage but the chemicals still pose a major risk.

@@1967davethewave Hi Dave . I had one too, De Villbis and l used an air fed mask . Certainly with the modern 2 packs the risks are much higher . I had a friend who would not wear any protection and he was using Glasurit in a booth with very primitive extraction. He paid the penalty , heart attack ,lungs knackered at 53 .end of ! In the '50's /'60's it was still Nitro-cellulose ....now that smell still gives me a Buzz !!

The were allowed to go outside for a cigarette every half hour.

That confused me. Why didn't they buy one? I'm sure they had some issues early in their career. Hocking up the paint color the next morning.

Painting back hand was impressive.

I knew a Guy who did this his entire life.... he died at the Age of 89. The overspray gets sucked away towards the Floor.... you don´t breathe any of it. Get some Knowledge before writing. ;-)

@@FRITZI999 My friend owns a body shop and he doesn’t wear a mask either because the fumes get sucked out of the room.

@@darthjarjarbinks8953 EXACTLY !!!! :-)

Crazy isn’t it I wear a fresh air hood and a paint suit

Lots of heath hazards for sure and the work was hard.

Back in the '60's the split window was considered a bastard. Very many were converted to the later style '64/'67 rear window as soon as the first '64 came out. But what made them undesirable in the '60's made them super desirable by the late '70's!

After looking into I too was amazed how much hand labor is needed.

Sure does, lots of heath hazards also.

When I worked for GM (mid 70's to mid 80's) most of my time working was getting assembly lines up and running again when something failed. I responded and worked as quickly as possible to get the line up and running again which greatly pleased management. They in turn looked the other way when everything was running smoothly and I took a break. Now as your stated the working conditions could be harsh or even dangerous. Today companies look closely at safety, ergonomics, and other factors to improve working conditions which improves production.

They really do and they are the least refined of the 5 years the C2s were produced.

In reality there was very few people at the plant that actually owned a Corvette. There was some but very few. At $3.90 an hour in 1968 it didn't go far. I remember so clearly many conversations among us sayin, who is buying these cars for $5000 +/-, ? You could buy a nice new Impala or a truck for half the cost.

Look it’s common knowledge if you search. I put the photos in order and made a slide show so everyone looking can find something historical and interesting. I have no interest in stealing someone’s intellectual property or profiting from it which I don’t. Relax and enjoy history.

@@mjdart54 Here's what the presentation's author had to say about it: ...the RU-vid poster stole every last byte and image of that, using every photo, in exactly the correct operational sequence from my tediously-compiled PowerPoint presentation on the St. Louis-Corvette Body Shop, Paint Shop, Trim Shop, Chassis, and Final assembly process which I presented at the 2011 NCRS National Convention in Novi and subsequently at several Regionals that same year, with no attribution whatsoever to me as the author and copyright holder.... It just gags me that the guy stole my work, presents it as his, and gives no credit or attribution to me as the author; welcome to the Internet.

@@oldcrowsracing7479 I had though Chevrolet out the material and photos together, that’s why I used the Chevrolet slide as the first to acknowledge them.

@@mjdart54 You have been presented with the opportunity to do the right thing and correct an injustice. Whether or not it was intentional matters not; what you did was wrong by titling this presentation as your own, and the person you wronged has said so no uncertain terms as above. You may choose to merely be defensive or brush it off, or you could do the right thing. You need to edit the video and title it with the source's name, which is not Chevrolet. www.corvettemuseum.org/john-hinckley/

There you go. 2020 Corvette looks like some damn nintendo game thing.

plagiarism: "the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own". For example, taking someone else's presentation and putting one's own name as the author. To correct your foul, you need to replace the title page with one crediting the author of this presentation.

Yes, the Corvettes were actually very difficult to produce from what I've read. The workers "craftsmen" took a difficult process and made a very nice product with thier skills.

The top engine with a carburetor on the 2nd Gen Corvette was 365hp. It was the exact same engine as the 375hp Fuel injected engine with just an aluminum dual plane intake and a Holley 4bbl on top.

@@1967davethewave indeed

I just read a paragraph from Larry Galloway's book. He was QC between Corvette and the Ionia MI plant where half of all Corvette bodies were producted between 1964 and 1967. He stated "Bond joints were impossible to hide with paint. Knowing where the joints are makes them fairly easy to detect".

The "bird cage" is shown starting at 0:12 thru to 0:29. At 0:23 you can clearly see the lower brace of this frame work and the horizontal piece the VIN and Trim Tags were attached to. Starting in 1964 the bodies were not only manufactured at Chevrolet's St. Louis Plant. but also in Ionia Michigan at the A.O. Smith Factory.

I worked at a GM plant in Rochester NY in the mid 70's (Millwright) and I was around many nasty chemicals used for cleaning and plating. There were very few precautions back then and I could only imagine how the early 60's were.

@@mjdart54 Hello fellow skilled tradesman. Thanks for your reply. In my comment, I forgot to mention that a fellow skilled tradesman in my department, dropped out of 10th grade because he could not read. Served our country in Vietnam, came home after learning a trade in the Marine's. All hands on, no reading of repair manuals, no reading of newspaper's or magazine's. Came home from the war, opened shop in the family home garage. Had a cousin who was foreman in the auto industry. Cousin got him in the door working in the same department as his cousin and I. Whenever this guy had to use a shop repair manual to do his job in sequence fashion, he had to ask the other guy's in the shop to help him read the printed material. One day I point blank asked him why he needs to have other guys read him what the repair manual sez. He replied: Did you ever see me reading magazines or newspaper's during lunch like the rest of ypu guy's? That's because I can't read, I dropped out of the 10rh grade because I couldn't read. Well guess what? Because of the good old buddy system in the UAW, this guy eventually became my union Committeeman. The guy who would write up and file my grievances, if any. He would be my Union spokes person if the company management had a contractual issue with me, and would write me up. Can you believe that? And all this nonsense occurred during the 1990's . Go figure....

@@rickprusak9326 I miss the guys in the shop, I bet they don't read newspapers anymore like they used to. Rochester Products, where I worked liked hiring Marines, especially for supervisors. I mainly worked production maintenance after finishing my apprenticeship and the supervisors always liked me as I got right after fixing the line when it stopped moving. We had a very large engineering workforce and I always got along with them so GM sent me to take engineering courses, so I could speak their language. I've always been grateful to GM for that as it helped me land a very good job with FPL the utility company at a power plant after GM offered a buyout in 1986. I just retired after 33 years there after 10 with GM. I met alot of guys like you described throughout the years and I wouldn't trade those memories for anything.

I don't think that type of mandate would be received very well here in the US. I could only imagine a much more violent replay of the the Boston Tea Party might easily arise as a response.