Is GM Planning to Destroy Their History – And Who Cares?
OK, history is a bunch of dry facts written down by a crusty old professor who hasn’t seen the light of day in 15 years, so who cares – right? WRONG!
That’s not what we’re talking about here – we're talking about is all that stuff that we use in our hobby like production figures, engineering drawings, ads, brochures, assembly info, casting numbers, and such.
WHAT’S GOING ON
GM thinks of this stuff as either "junk" or "secret sauce" that is somehow going to give the Japs an upper hand in vehicle design, like Nissan is looking for the plans for a 1970 GTO ram air hood – yeah right.
BUT inside information tells us that what GM is really up to is declaring these materials "secret" so that they can destroy them! Yup, they have already told the GM Heritage Center, where you can go and look up stuff that all engineering drawings are off limits – stuff that shows up in the assembly manuals already!
Why do they want to destroy the materials? Because then they don’t have to PAY to preserve it, period. Getting rid of documents and Artifacts (even cars and such) means that they can spend whatever they spending are on this stuff some other place. History seems to mean nothing to the bigwigs at GM, most of whom couldn’t tell a Corvette from a Cadillac (oh, that’s right nowadays, they are the same car).
We already know that over the past 15 years, they have sent their attorneys out to those selling GM reproduction parts and tried to muscle up on these people to milk a few dollars out of them or shut them down, with stupid arguments that somehow GM is liable if the part fails. In some cases they have made people get insurance coverage when they are producing a T-Shirt with the premise that if the person wearing the shirt could sue GM if they were involved in an accident with the shirt on!
GM doesn’t seem to give a hoot about the very people that are preserving their history and for some reason, they cannot see the link between their past glory and how that relates to customer loyalty and selling new cars. "This is not your father’s Oldsmobile". Yup, and that’s why there is no Oldsmobile Division anymore.
WHAT WE ARE DOING
Well, what is surprising is that it doesn’t have to be this way. Believe it or not, the federal government’s National Archives, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Parks Commission actually have grants money available to catalog and preserve these materials and artifacts. And now is the time to go after this money, while the fed still owns a major holding in GM – where they can exact leverage on them to do what is right.
There is a group in place called the Auto History Preservation Society
www.ahpsoc.org who is putting together projects on how to get the job done. The group needs YOUR HELP, by getting on their list to show GM that we are serious and concerned.
WHAT YOU NEED TO DO – RIGHT NOW!
Simply go to
www.ahpsoc.org and sign up. All it takes is to click on the "subscribe" button that appears on almost every page of the website, enter your e-mail and your name.
By showing support for this program, we can avert a tragedy, and in the end it might even save you money – imagine that. Come on, it takes 5 minutes to join, so let’s get going!
Thanks.