The big Chrysler historical records "fire" of the 1970's

[70chall440]

I am pretty sure that he didn't know what he was talking about; he thought he did but when pressed began to back peddle. I personally asked him 3 times "are you sure that these records exist" and he responded each time with "yes, absolutely", but when I told him the importance of this issue, he began to withdraw.

[HP_Cuda]

Con men don't like a great deal of scrutiny.

[70chall440]

I wouldn't say this guy was a con man as he didn't have anything to gain by the information. He "believed" what he said, but I do not think he knew what he was actually saying, rather he "assumed" that Chrysler had all of these records safely stashed away and spoke out of turn. When he realized that what he said could come back and bite him personally, he backed off. Can you imagine the uproar if the hobby in general stated hammering Chrysler for copies of all of the build sheets citing so and so stated they were available?

Having said that, it would certainly be interesting if those records were made available. How many high dollar high option cars would be found out to be incorrect or worse complete fakes? How many uninteresting cars would all a sudden become very rare? It would change the hobby for sure at least in the beginning.

[HP_Cuda]

Then what was with the binder he showed you???

[70chall440]

it was a product that Chrysler was thinking about offering to classic Mopar fans. Basically it was a "everything you wanted to know about your car/model" type product that would be sold through Mopar Performance/Direct Connection and he was looking for some feedback as to how it would be received by the community. He was involved in the development of the binder/product but to what level I don't know. For clarity sake, he was/is a Chrysler employee.

[HP_Cuda]

This story gets more interesting every day.

 

[70chall440]

I apologize, I realize that I should have stated this was a Chrysler employee when I first posted it (it was clear in my head...). That being the pivotal point; a Chrysler employee telling me that "all the records are in storage" is what got me and my friends excited.

[TelisSE440]

I believe the truth is much more dull and unimpressive than we (people in general) think. IMHO it is almost impossible that records were kept for every car, not that this is hard to create the bureaucracy for that, rather than that no one, but very few bright people, would think that those pretty little cars would be made legendary in 45 years from now. They saw no need (or didn't even think about it) to create a record for the produced cars. The only known records that have been saved, are these that are known to us today. And that's the bad thing about conspiracy theories, a man spreads them and all the other people hear them and unknowingly believe and spread them, so one time people hear it from multiple sources and they firmly believe it. Not wanting sound negative or something like that, I think it would be superb if that files existed, but unfortunately they don't 

[roadman5312]

I believe the truth is much more dull and unimpressive than we (people in general) think. IMHO it is almost impossible that records were kept for every car, not that this is hard to create the bureaucracy for that, rather than that no one, but very few bright people, would think that those pretty little cars would be made legendary in 45 years from now. They saw no need (or didn't even think about it) to create a record for the produced cars. The only known records that have been saved, are these that are known to us today. And that's the bad thing about conspiracy theories, a man spreads them and all the other people hear them and unknowingly believe and spread them, so one time people hear it from multiple sources and they firmly believe it. Not wanting sound negative or something like that, I think it would be superb if that files existed, but unfortunately they don't 

                             I've read some interesting articles on The Marti Reports on Fords. Still not sure how that came to be, but highly respected in the Ford community.

 

[ChallengerHK]

 

While I don't think there's any conspiracy going on, there's no doubt in my mind that something did happen with Chrysler records storage in the 70s.

[70chall440]

I have no doubt that something happened to the records, burned, trash, etc. Chrysler had no reason to keep them. This is why I was so surprised when this guy said what he did.

[HP2]

Then what was with the binder he showed you???

The stuff listed below;

Basically it was a model specific fact book that had a lot of period marketing material, specifications, facts, etc.

So it would be the reproduction of color dealer brochure booklets of the model, maybe some dealer option and order sheets, probably a host of single page advertisements as seen in magazines, some road test articles from magazines, maybe reproduction Hustle Stuff catalogs from that year. I don't doubt that a complete set of reprints of all that could easily be an inch thick worth of paper.

[ChallengerHK]

There were black and white versions of this same material published in a series of books in the 80s. I think they were called "Factbooks". I used to have them all, but I got tired of hauling them all around the country on my various moves and sold them on ebay.

[RzeroB]

Try as I may, I can find no reference on the internet to there ever being a big fire that wiped out Chrysler's records department. I'm no internet search guru by any means, so it doesn't mean that it didn't happen, I just can't find anything on it.

This is contrast to the National Personnel Records Center fire that occurred in 1973 where a fire destroyed a huge amount of military personnel records in of all places, here in St Louis. All sorts of references to that fire pop up even when you put "Chrysler records fire" in your search engine. I would think that if a fire was big enough to wipe out hundreds of thousands of records in Chrysler's records department it would of at least made the local news and that news article would be searchable today - but of course it isn't (or at least I can't find it).

I'm starting to believe that perhaps the records disappeared in the 1970's in a similar manner in which they did in 2009 when Chrysler filed bankruptcy under Cerberus Capital Management - they just threw them out. Like in 2009 when Cerberus just threw them out to save the money being spent on maintaining the records, I think something similar happened in the bankruptcy of the 1970's - they threw them out to save the money being spent on maintaining the records. The more I think about it, the more I think that theory seems more plausible than a big fire of which there is no empirical record of it ever happening.

[ChallengerHK]

PArt of me agrees with you, but I will add this. When I was working in Detroit, at one point I worked in Hamtramck. I thought to myself "Hell, I'll figure out where Dodge Main was and pay the site a visit." It took me months to figure out where the site was. Dodge MAin definitely existed, and yet findng a record of the address, or the exact location, was pretty difficult at the time, and I was right there.

AS an aside, I found out there were I parked for that job was the location of the Dodge Main plant.