Lets talk about build sheets, in 1972 442 built in Arlington Texas. Any ideas as to where I would find mine?

 

This has been discussed a great deal. Others with your exact same car might have found theirs and will respond with where it was, but as a general rule, there was no strict factory policy as to where in the car they would be placed or even if they would be placed in the car at all. They were meant to be used by the workers on the assembly line and not meant to be a part of the purchaser's paperwork.

Having said all this, common locations are on top of the gas tank (obviously not accessible unless you remove the tank), under the rear seat or in the rear seat back, under the carpeting, under the headliner in the roof, or in the doors. Unless you are lucky enough to (a) have it be in the car at all, and (b) have it be located in some place easily accessed, you are not likely to find it unless you have some OTHER reason to take your car apart. Pulling doors apart, dropping gas tanks, or removing headliners all in the hope that the build sheet MIGHT be there, and in the process taking apart a perfectly-well functioning door or headliner or gas tank is just not worth it, in my opinion, especially because you might take all these things apart and still not find it.

Having said THIS, I had a '75 Delta 88 once that came with the build sheet in the glovebox when I bought it. The seller told me he found it under the rear seat and kept it in the car. Bless him.

If you knew for SURE where it was located, even if it was difficult to get at, it might be worth disassembling the car enough to get at it, but if you don't even know if it's there at all...

 

I have this car mostly apart anyway,I just have not removed the interior yet.The body shop is next on my list so I will find it if it is in the car,I was just seeing if historically the Arlington cars of 72 had any known spots.But thank you for your input. I got lucky like that too with my 70 Delta.

 

Well good luck then! Let us know if you do find it. It would be interesting to know the condition it's in. The one from my '75 Delta had one corner torn off, although all the important info was still there, and the paper itself was browned and quite crispy, being 20 years old at the time.

 

We should also clarify what exactly you are talking about. There are "build sheets", generally considered to be the paper from the assembly plant, and the "broadcast cards", the paper from Fisher Body having only body related information on it. The broadcast cards are often erroneously called "build sheets". One is more apt to find broadcast cards in circa '69-'73 cars.
Since the broadcast cards are just body related, the build sheets have much more information on them.
Neither sheets were specifically instructed to be be left in the cars, but ofen were. You will rarely find a build sheet in a Lansing car, word was they were specifically told to put the sheets in the trash there.
I don't believe prior to '68, there were broadcast cards, as such. There were, however, smaller tags that had body info on them, and they are usually found attached to the underside of seats.

 

With his being an Arlington car, maybe he'll get lucky.

By the way, the '75 Delta 88 in which mine was found was built at Fairfax, Kansas.

 

My 72 was a Lansing car and the sheet was under the carpet by the left seatbelt retractor.
Details here:
https://classicoldsmobile.com/forums...eet-found.html
This sheet was used by Fisher body to identify any options that would affect the building of only the body.
For example, on my car, the interior courtesy lights & wiring and rear speakers & wiring had to be installed by Fisher before the carpet and seats... I have the deluxe seatbelts, so they had to be installed instead of the regular ones.
I have front disk brakes, but that was a GM chassis option, so that option is not listed on the sheet and Fisher did not care.

 

So what you found was actually the "broadcast card" as described by wmachine above, not the build sheet?

 

Right. Full 'build sheet' was never found. The thread I made long ago misinterprets the BC for a BS, but I had no clue there were two kinds of sheets back then.

 

A neat little story went with my build sheet. It had on it the code number of the dealer to whom the car was originally delivered. (Is this common on build sheets? If not, was it possibly not really a build sheet but something else? Maybe there was a dealer code if the car was a special order?)

Anyway, I wrote to the Olds History Center in Lansing, and they were able to get me the name and address of this dealer. It turned out to be in Trenton, New Jersey, and they were still in business (this was in about 1995, 20 years after the car was sold). I wrote to that dealer, and I received a very nice letter back from the owner who told me that they didn't keep much in the way of records from that far back, but he was able to find what he called a "delivery card" which had the name and address of the person who originally bought the car. Unfortunately, that name and address was not in the current Trenton phone book (he looked that up for me, too), or I would have written to them asking if they still had any of the original purchase paperwork.

Because I had bought the car in Florida, I thought it possible that whoever had bought it in New Jersey might have later moved there, so I did internet and phone book database searching and came up with three people in Florida who had the same name (it was a bit of an unusual name, fortunately. If it had been "John Smith," I'd have been dead meat.) I wrote to these three people blindly and asked if any of them might have been the original purchaser. One wrote right back and said that he wasn't but that he hoped I might find the actual person. I never heard from the other two, so the story kind of ended there. But it was a fun hunt while it lasted.

 

Kind of a shot in the dark,but sometimes that turns out to be rewarding.

 

Here's my card.
It was hogringed to the back seat springs

C60- AC
U58- stereo radio am-fm
B39- carpeted load floor

 

Exactly!

That is why I'm bringing up the distinctions now.

 

Yes, the "sold to" dealer and the zone/dealer numbers are normally shown on the build sheet. Also the "ship to" dealer if different than the "sold to dealer".

 

Thanks. So does this mean that it was known where every car coming off the line was going before building it even started? I would have thought that, sometimes at least, cars would be built to keep the line running generally, and then it would be decided later, once a batch of cars was sitting in the lot outside the factory, where they would be sent based on dealer demand.

 

That's a good question. I've been trying to get the whole picture on how the ordering system worked back in the '60. I started years ago with wondering why so many cars came with what seemed to be such an odd combination of options. That led to a lot of questions posed to former dealer employees whenever I had the chance. I was originally under the impression that the majority of cars were specifically ordered by customers. From what I've been told, I am confidently sure that was not the case. No data were kept on this, but from what I was told, I'd estimate 75% of the cars were sold off the lot or *some other dealer's inventory*. The options for cars that were ordered by the dealers were usually selected by the Sales Manager, but could have come from anybody if ultimately approved by the dealer. So when buying a car, one had basically had 3 options:
1. Buy from dealer stock. The obvious preference of the dealer!
2 Select particular options and the dealer would find one. This could be anything from a car sitting on another dealers lot to a car the another dealer already has on order *for stock*.
3. Specific factory order. Often called a "special order" by buyers ("my car was special ordered...."), it was simply an order that was originated by a customer.
#2 is why you see build sheets with the "sold to" and "ship to" as different dealers. This was done to replace cars that were sold from other dealers "inventory".
I've never seen any evidence that cars were built to keep production going. I believe that it was a zone function to keep the dealer orders there (quotas) that kept the "pipeline full". But who know.
I happen to recently run into a local gentleman who was a very successful Olds Sales Manager in the Cleveland area in the '60s. We will be getting together here very soon, and I plan on grilling him on this and other topics. We are both really looking forward to getting together for this. He appears as anxious to talk as I am to listen!!

 

Interesting info. Thank you.

 

"WMachine" keep us posted on your upcoming conversation. Thanks.

 

My Dad used to be a Cadillac dealer in the 70s and 80s and I ordered cars. Every car was "special order" i.e. it was either sold or stock but every car had to be ordered individually by hand.

I found my 75 88 conv sheet under my feet one day after having new carpeting installed after a very long and fast drive home on the expressway, miraculously blowing around my feet as I pulled in the driveway and it is a Lansing car.