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  • 2007-11-01 (xsd:date)
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  • Were 1957 Chevies Secretly Produced Until 1967? (en)
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  • Many a product has gone through the life cycle of development, marketing, and then eventual obsolescence when its manufacturer determined it no longer sold well enough to justify continued production or decided to focus on offering a newer and better version. Upon occasion, however, a discontinued product has retained a strong enough following among a devoted group of aficionados for another company to venture licensing or purchasing the rights from the original manufacturer and resuming production. (One example of this phenomenon occurred when INTV bought the rights to the Intellivision video game system from Mattel, selling off old inventory and then producing new consoles and game cartridges.) That's the basic idea behind a tale from the original (1975) edition of The People's Almanac, about a group of disenchanted General Motors stylists who left the company and spent ten years between 1958 and 1967 cranking out a few hundred thousand copies of the discontinued 1957 model Chevrolet at a small, private plant in Illinois — but the kicker is that they supposedly did all this without the knowledge, cooperation, or consent of General Motors: The story seems a fairly obvious bit of humor chock full of tongue-in-cheek jabs at the auto industry (especially evident in the closing reference to Volkswagen's supposed interest in opening a U.S. plant to produce 1973 Buick Rivieras — this was written in 1975, shortly after the Riviera had also undergone a significant and much-criticized design change), but its inclusion in a reference work with no external indicator of its fictional status has led many readers in the years since to take it seriously. For those who prefer a more thorough debunking, we highlight a few of the tale's many implausibilities below: We don't know how this tale ended up being published in The People's Almanac: whether the compilers decided to include bit of drollery in the book as lark, or a prankish writer managed to slip a gag past unsuspecting editors, or a gullible researcher was taken in by a tall tale. But the story is indeed a joke, and, judging by the results, a good one at that. In honor of the 50th anniversary of the classic automobile's introduction, CARS Inc. announced in 2006 that they would begin offering newly-[re]built (from original cowls) 1957 Chevrolet convertibles. (en)
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