General Motors Restoration Packages
Posted April 12, 2007
You can get a "restoration package" for a U.S-built Chevelle at no cost from GM/Chevrolet. Simply call the Chevy/Geo customer assistance hotline at (800) 222-1020 or 810-696-4800. Have your VIN handy, they may or may not ask for it. I've called for several kits for Chevelles as well as a 1974 Corvette I've owned and sometimes they want a VIN, sometimes they just want to verify the year. The contents of this package varies by year but usually contains photocopied information from various dealer brochures, specs on engines, interior/exterior colors, options available, etc. It is a handy piece of information to have and it's free. Delivery is 2- to 4-weeks but I've received some in 10 days.
If your car was originally registered or built in Canada, you will have to call GM of Canada at (800) 263-3777. There is a fee for this service but they'll send you, what I refer to as a 'confirmation sheet' showing when/where the car was built along with all the options it came with. Latest information I have of the cost is $58.85 CDN; for U.S dollars, whatever the current exchange rate is. See here for more details.
Chevrolet produced more vehicles than all the other GM
divisions combined, and therefore generated a much higher volume of records
which were a storage problem.
After final year production, the build records have very little business value
to Chevrolet and therefore were not considered to be high priority for
retention. GM record retention policy required the assembly plants to retain
said documents for only about six months. Some records (including build sheets)
were retained longer at the Corvette assembly plants, St. Louis and Flint.
However, when Corvette production ceased at these locations, the records were
pitched. It should be noted that the current Corvette Assembly Plant in Bowling
Green, KY, retained the 1981 - present vehicle manifests that are available now
through the NCM. This was against all odds, as there were many movements over
the years within GM to destroy them because they had no business value to GM.
Meanwhile, back at the Tech Center in Warren, Michigan, the Chevrolet
Engineering Records Retention Policy called for periodic destruction of
non-essential records, of which the build documents were one, and this was
carried out on a routine basis. The other GM divisions, Cadillac, Pontiac, etc.,
had much smaller production volumes and interpreted the GM Records Retention
Policy differently and therefore retained said documents.
