Some questions I'm still confused or curious about.

1. What "model" years of information is/are "gone or lost"?
2. Was the info lost for all models (A, B, C, E) and from all assembly plants?
3. What happen to the Zone Office order info once it was sent (electronically?) to Detroit?
4. Was ALL of the information for all of assembly plants and Zone Offices stored in one location?
5. Did the fire, flood, etc., that destroyed those 4/5? model years of production information exactly on the last day of assembly or was there some carry over into the next model year's production?
6. If question 5. is that it happened mid year, later into the next model year is there anything that would indicate that, like some of the last assembly info for say '72 is available on none of the early '73 info is available?
7. With 5 model years of paper documentation for 5 or more assembly plants along with engine, transmission, axle plants etc. all being stored it must have been a huge fire that surely should have been reported in a Detroit newspaper?
8. What was the approximate date of the fire, flood etc., that it just happened to only destroy those 5 years of paper documentation?
9. One more how is Chrysler still able to print IBM cards today for model year cars and trucks before 1968 and after 1972 with the same basic IBM format?

Strange that between the model years of 1968 - 1972 not one piece of information/documentation survived? Wonder how the IRS would have taken that as an excuse if they were audited during the 7-year period?


Mike

from what I remember, they simply were done with the buildings and the guy I speak of said he actually took some of those records with him when he left .he never talked about a fire. just old info that was left behind. a new system was in place and it was all obsolete . he said he left boxes of records in the trunk of a 71 6 pack challenger when it was sold in the late 70's early 80's. posted on popular hot rodding web site nov- dec 2009 . I have tried to search for the post...

Michiganhotrod1 - forgot about teletype. Thanks for that.

As for buildings being gone, agreed, they are gone.

But the mainframe environments still exist. ODCIC, HPIMS, CLIMS, to name a few.

The young lady that helped me on the dealer code lookup mentioned she had warranty data from the 60’s and 70’s.

like I had mentioned earlier, the only way we will ever k ow if this “missing” data is archived at FCA is to get a shooter involved.
Or a few of the right people at the lower levels that know how to look for things.

As for my comment about a tape somewhere, what I should have said if stored anywhere they are on disc.

Sure would be nice to find it.

Signing out.

I don't have all the answers, but...
I worked in a zone office. Except for the few co-located with a parts warehouse, these were rented office space with no storage. Almost nothing was saved, the focus of the Zones is on what you are selling today.
The data that is missing is the vehicle specific build files, which tended to be saved to support activities like warranty claims and parts supply. Most other documents were trashed sooner. The pre 67 files that exist were converted to microfice, and survived; all you get is a simple copy of an IBM card. No one really knows for sure what happened to the rest.
Remember, this was the era of the recession/ Chrysler bankruptcy/ crack epidemic/ last-one-in-Michigan-turn-out-the-lights. Run down inner city buildings burned daily, and only made the news if someone died. I find it amazing that anything survived at all.
A final note. Detroit is filled with Mopar enthusiasts, working and retired, who would dearly love this information. Personally, I want a build card for my 71 'Cuda convertible, to see if it was built with billboard stripes; the second fender tag is missing. If the information was out there, someone here would have found it.
Mark

Not sure if Jeff Bangert from the TA/AAR registry is on here, but he went into this at length on the TA/AAR Facebook page a month or two back.
In short, and I'm paraphrasing from memory from his post:

* There was no fire at Chrysler
* The fire "myth" was perpetuated by those around / in Chrysler
* Why?
* Starting in 68 or 69 the sales orders had the buyers name, addy AND social security number attached to it. Thats the main reason why they won't release the records (the SS#) Plus they won't go through the trouble of redacting every single sales order to satisfy collectors today. Jeff knows a couple of people who have seen these records first hand (IIRC).

I'm just passing this info on and will try and locate the post stating this.

Ok I found the post and responses from Jeff that I referenced above.
I believe him and the reasoning behind his response.

BEST ANSWER and heard this also just recently and to you and the other person I heard this story from.......................now let's see if we can organize a "Go Fund Me" or "Kickstarter" page to pay for a retired Chrysler employee to come in and redact all of the private information on some of the vehicles.......shoot I'll do it for a side job and a few dollars. You wouldn't need to redact every vehicle just maybe once every quarter for the logged in request for info on particular vehicles. Come on Chrysler let us know how much we need to raise to have someone redact the request for vehicle info once every quarter or even every six months?

MikeR

So why not making this clear statement (which is reasonable) and creating such a myth around a fire/flood? The part with the ss# could be easily blocked out btw. and Chrysler could make a nice business out of selling these records. ;-) Michiganhotrods version make more sense to me.

Until there’s someone actual proof, I’ll believe the fire story😀

Not me, I just can't see how the entire production records for FOUR or FIVE MODEL YEARS of EVERY MODEL or hundreds of thousands of records from EVERY Chrysler, Dodge, and Plymouth assembly plant from multiply states were lost in a fire in one building in Detroit????

6bblgt how many cars were produced during the time between model years 1968 and 1971 or is that 1972? I'm guessing with one year having 84,000 '69 Road Runners the total count has to be close to or over ONE MILLION cars or more for that time period...................and not one record survived, how is that possible?

Me I'm going with one of two: The info retrieval equipment is no longer available or private information cannot be released or both, which makes way more sense than a single warehouse or dumpster fire in some old building in Detroit

Mike

roughtly 1.5M total cars built in North America each of those years: Chrysler / Plymouth / Dodge / Imperial

Geeezzzz!

"Starting in '68 Chrysler started putting the buyers social security number and bank order on the paperwork...."

OK then, what about all of the Sales Bank cars, a huge number then. They were ordered without a buyer (sometimes without a dealer). What about these?

What about all of the '69 A12 six pack cars and the Plymouth Superbirds that were bulk ordered in Detroit, not by dealers or customers.

Try again.
Mark

Go to the 6:00 - 8:00 mark in this old film from another manufacture and let me know if Chrysler did or didn't have a similar method of documentation and record keeping?

This is actually a good and interesting film from the period (1969) we're discussing and it surely shows that this wasn't the stone age for electronic record keeping. I just find it hard to believe that ALL of the records from ALL of the assembly plants for ALL of those years could ALL be lost in one old warehouse fire.

A couple of scenes from record keeping at the auto manufacture.......heck of a fire for sure

The paper rolling off of the printer is probably about 15 minutes worth at one station of one 8-hour day/shift. Wonder how much paper it generated in one day for 5-years........again that must have been one heck of a fire.

Could be the only records that survived were the survey record documentation done by the pretty lady

I think every manufacturer has a yarn about a fire.

I've been to the GM Heritage Center and the level of records kept is dependent on the brand, what was tossed over time, what was stolen over time, and what has been misplaced.

Ford stuff exists for 1967 and beyond, digitized from IBM cards by Kevin Marti:

https://www.isomustangs.org/Article.../THE-MARTI-REPORT-The-Ford-DataBase.aspx

Darryl Davis also has gone through records at Hamtramck to compile cross-ram, Max Wedge, and early Hemi cars. No more research is going to be done by him, and possibly no one else.

Cool photos, but..... Probably nothing of that stuff lasted past the model year. We had big dumpsters at work to trash the no longer needed tractor paper reports and tapes. They were sent to a secure scrap agency (Iron Mountain was one) to be securely shredded. Otherwise we would have been swimming in the stuff.
Mark

Chrysler was an early innovator in using computers to aid processes.
This is slightly off topic, but a fun video showing these systems in use in the mid 1950's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6L0ykX9lPU&ab_channel=KingRoseArchives

So, if the paper files, which could be identified on sight as useful information didn't survive, do you think a bunch of mag tapes that look like Sanskrit carvings would do any better? And if saved, if they were piled in boxes in a leaky roofed warehouse for all these years, would they still be able to provide data? Try again.
M

Nowadays, this stuff would be gold to an owner of a rare muscle car and they’d pay Chrysler for the records. Since the demand is high, the records would have been found by now...Once again, Chrysler is going under a new name and owner (just like they have over the last several decades). With all the changes in ownership, I think the records would have been tossed if they still existed.

You and a lot of Chrysler fanatical Sheep really don't understand the Big Picture responsibilities a major corporation has to it's Regulators and the Government, do you?

No major corporation "burns" their records. They CAN'T. People would go to jail for doing so.

How do you think Blunder Motors tracked down every car with key lock/ignition problems that killed over a hundred people 14 years later? Because they KEPT RECORDS, not "tossed" them. The Basterds went BANKRUPT and those records were still kept.

End of discussion.