Courtesy of Chevrolet, here’s an up-close look at the state of the art in auto manufacturing in 1948.
The 1948 season marked the end of an era at Chevrolet, it’s fair to say. This was the GM division’s final year with what was essentially a pre-World War II vehicle design, as Chevy would roll out an entirely new passenger car line for 1949. So by that time, it’s also fair to note, the automaker had considerable experience in churning out its venerable prewar Stovebolts, and it shows in this 1948 Jam Handy film, which is entitled, aptly enough, Millions of Masterpieces.
The film offers many useful glimpses at the state of the art in auto production in the late ’40s, but first we direct you to a neat moment just past the two-minute mark when we are treated to a sneak peek of the soon-to-appear 1949 Chevrolet. And at three minutes, check out the fatigue testing of radiator hoses and coil springs. In short, here’s another Jam Handy love letter to 20th-century mass production. Video below.
The work looks romantic, even heroic in the film footage but in reality, these were dirty, grueling jobs with hazardous conditions and materials.
By the time I began working at a Chevy dealership in 1971, the new cars we were getting in exhibited no trace of all this careful inspection and assembly. And then they got worse.
I worked for a GM dealer for several years (officially from ’75 to ’84). I checked most of the new cars and trucks off the carrier and I found some minor errors, mostly dirty but overall fairly well built. But we just cleaned and polished them and put them on the lot. We did find some doozies. I remember getting a new Catalina (1980) in that the heater/A-C would only blow ice cold out the heater vent. We tore the dash apart and found a mess of vacuum lines that had been pulled out, wadded up and just shoved in. It was obviously sabotage. We also sold John Deere farm machinery. I remember one tractor that collapsed a piston (twice) during the initial dyno test. It turned out there was a pencil broken off in the main web where the cooling jet went in. Another case of sabotage. So there were some problems.
My first mechanic job after I got out of the Navy in 71 was at a Chevy dealership. By the end of the first day I was appalled by the total lack of quality I was seeing in brand new cars. It was a real eye opener. Nothing fit right , nothing was adjusted right, loose and missing fasteners, screws driven through wire harnesses, water leaks everywhere. Cars that wouldn’t run well enough to get them off the transporter and into the shop. One car that simply wouldn’t run at idle which turned out to be a defective carb casting that had no idle fuel passages. A Vega that barely ran because it had a 6 lobe points cam in the 4 cylinder distributor. Nobody at the factory noticed that these cars were barely mobile? More like nobody cared.New brake discs that had to be turned because the final machining wasn’t done by the factory (Chevy sent us a bulletin saying that was normal because they were using “tool path machining” or something like that, which was their way of explaining why they stopped doing the final machining on the brake rotors). Horrible orange peel paint jobs (Chevy sent us a bulletin explaining that what looked like orange peel wasn’t really orange peel, it was just their new painting process). Then around 73-74 they stopped painting the undercarriages so every new car was all rusty underneath right off the truck. Lumps under the carpets on new cars, which turned out to be extra parts and fasteners left on the floor that the carpets were just installed over. “Not my job, man”. New Chevy trucks coming off the transporter with GMC grilles or tailgates or wheel covers. New Vegas with Pontiac steering wheels. A brand new Caprice Classic with no airflow from the vents, because the heater housing was stuffed full of McDonalds trash left in there by the assembly line worker (French on all the trash, car built in Canada). I spent a year as the water leak guy, sealing up all the glass and the body seams that the factory didn’t bother to seal up. Every new station wagon was automatically scheduled for an 8 hour water leak appointment. I worked there for 6 years and bought 2 new cars during that time, but neither of them were GM cars. Unfortunately neither the Ford or the Plymouth I bought were much better. It was very obvious to me why the Japanese were doing so well in the market. Nobody in Detroit really gave a damn.
There was a lot of skuttlebutt about poor American quality control but from my experience the A-C debacle was the worst I ever saw. Over the years I had two Japanese vehicles. The first was a pickup that to this day is still the WORST POS I ever owned. My mother had a Corona that leaked ATF from day one. After two failed attempts to patch it they determined that the transmission case was porous. They ordered a new case that took the better part of a year to get in. They installed it which solved the problem but then refused the warranty because it was over the year by that time. That pretty much soured my family from ever buying another car from across the Pacific. I remember a Toyota salesman droning on about their quality being second to none and that they never broke down, yet every time I looked into their service department it was full of broken Toyotas that were every bit as shiny as the Chevys across the street. I‘ve owned and driven GM and Ford for over 50 years and came from a farm where everything was American. Personally I see no reason to change. My brother thinks Toyota invented the car and that’s fine with me. It’s whatever floats your boat that counts…
When I left the Chevy dealership in 77 (because I was tired of working on junk) I went down the road to a Toyota dealership. The difference in quality control was incredible, no comparison at all. I’m not saying nothing ever broke on a Toyota, or the dealers wouldn’t have a service department. But when those cars came off the transporter everything was installed and assembled properly. There were no missing parts or sabotaged parts, the headlights were aimed properly and everything worked. Never saw a leaky windshield or a wiring harness with a screw run through it. I don’t remember a single new car having to be pushed into the shop because it was undriveable, which was pretty common on new Chevys. In 3 years working on Toyotas I saw exactly 1 case of a new car coming in with a missing part. It was a 78 Corolla where the L/R window wouldn’t go down because the bolts holding the glass to the regulator were missing. This was so unusual that every employee was clustered around looking at it and marveling, even the salesmen and the janitor. Things like that just didn’t happen. And I bet Toyota traced it to the worker who left the bolts off and he didn’t do it again. Contrast that to the new 73 Chevy pickups that all leaned to the right because the R/S control arm bracket was welded to the crossmember in the wrong place and it took Chevy 2 years to fix the problem. And then there was the Vega which was without question the worst pile of steaming crap ever built.
Those were truly hard working Americans back then. A lot of them had just helped save the world during WWII and came home to good paying factory jobs. No doubt it was back breaking, dangerous, boring work on an assembly line. And it’s no wonder that automation has replaced many or most of them now. It would be almost impossible to find enough people to fill manual labor jobs like that now.