Vintage vehicle services and australian built CKD bodies

koolconvertible · Poncho Master!

Vintage vehicle services and australian built CKD bodies

DonSSDD · Canadian Poncho Superstar!

Seems if GMH assembled the cars, only they would know what they were built as? Plus they would be creating the serial number and trim tag, not Canada? So Canada would not have the records, Australia would?

There is an Aussie fellow named Carl Snelling who tracks Chevy vins and trim tags, not sure what he tracks for Aussie assembled cars.

-- Edited by DonSSDD on Tuesday 9th of August 2022 06:37:00 AM

seventy2plus2 · Canadian Poncho Superstar!

I'm not clear on what your question is. Have you checked with Vintage Vehicle Services and they say they have no info?

koolconvertible · Poncho Master!

seventy2plus2 wrote:
I'm not clear on what your question is. Have you checked with Vintage Vehicle Services and they say they have no info?

Actually,no. I should. Having a discussion with another aussie about it. You are right, contacting them would have been best in the first instance.

Tokyo Delivery · Veteran Member

There's not much to know about our locally assembled CKD cars. There were no options, all cars were identical mechanically year for year. The only differences were whether it was a pillared sedan or hardtop through to 1967 for Pontiacs (all 1968 Pontiacs were hardtop sedans, but the Chev was sold in both pillared & pillarless in 68), and the colours & trim which were borrowed from the Holden line in the later 65-68 years. Earlier cars got full leather seats, but also used local Holden paint colours. Air conditioning was a dealer installed accessory. Nothing else varied on the cars as far as I know.

Any of the less usual body styles that made it here like your convertible were usually imported fully assembled from Canada.

Canadian Poncho · A Poncho Legend!

Were the CKD cars shipped in primer and painted in Australia?

HK1837 · Addicted!

No. They came across as two packs: body pack and mechanical pack. The bodies were all put together at the GMH Woodville plant (remember Holden vehicles also used Fischer body jigs) and the cars assembled at the various Assembly Plants (Pagewood, Dandenong, Elizabeth and Acacia Ridge (I've never seen an Acacia Ridge assembled Pontiac or Chevrolet though)) using some local content like paint, trim etc. VIN tags didn't come into existance within GMH until September 1967 (when the first HK Holden bodies were put together) and not used in production until HK production began in December 1967. The 1968 Parisienne and Impala assembled by GMH weren't released until 4th April 1968 for the Parisienne and 9th April 1968 for the Impala so they got GMH VIN tags. Not sure if any 1967 version assembled by GMH got VIN tags in the few months prior to 1968 assembly. GMH were still building those 1968 vehicles until the middle of 1970 - we've found a few with GMH safety compliance tags on them which are dated with month/year and these weren't fitted to any GMH assembled vehicles until January 1970.

The cars always used GMH body tags too.

HK1837 · Addicted!

Tokyo Delivery wrote:
There's not much to know about our locally assembled CKD cars. There were no options, all cars were identical mechanically year for year. The only differences were whether it was a pillared sedan or hardtop through to 1967 for Pontiacs (all 1968 Pontiacs were hardtop sedans, but the Chev was sold in both pillared & pillarless in 68), and the colours & trim which were borrowed from the Holden line in the later 65-68 years. Earlier cars got full leather seats, but also used local Holden paint colours. Air conditioning was a dealer installed accessory. Nothing else varied on the cars as far as I know.

Any of the less usual body styles that made it here like your convertible were usually imported fully assembled from Canada.

1968 Pontiac customizable items were:

A/C as stated.

Black or White vinyl roof.

Rayon Tyres in 8.15x15 4ply tubeless with triple white band.

Chevrolet was the same with the addition of tinted screen on the sedan (already standard on the Parisienne and the Sport Sedan Impala.

4SPEED427 · A Poncho Legend!

Curious, was the A/C an indash unit like the factory installed, or was it an underdash?

koolconvertible · Poncho Master!

4SPEED427 wrote:
Curious, was the A/C an indash unit like the factory installed, or was it an underdash?

Under dash units. Our interiors were real pov pack stuff

4SPEED427 · A Poncho Legend!

So there is no such thing as an RHD Pontiac with a factory in dash air. At least in the 60's. Interesting. I guess it would have been too much engineering for a somewhat limited market?