Tales From The Chevy Dealership Parts Department: Comment Of The Few Days Ago

One of my favorite parts about the Autopian community is that, sometimes, we get to hear unique stories about how cars and people intersect. Every week, we seem to write stories that jog the memories of our readers.

The Bishop wrote about the GM Super Duty engine. Tony Sestito tells a fun story:

Back around 2002, I was in college and I found myself working part time at a big Chevy dealer that specialized in having a huge parts department which supplied a lot of the smaller dealers with parts. It was so huge that they had 3 floors of parts on-site AND a detached warehouse down the road. It was my job initially to find and gather up all the old, discontinued inventory and determine whether we could sell it on Ebay or dump it right in the dumpster out back. And we had A LOT of this inventory, because the former parts manager had some backroom scam cooking with the old GM district manager that traded dead inventory from the regional warehouse for perks like vacation cruises, money bonus spiffs, and more. Put it this way: I had to toss an entire pallet of NOS woodgrain AM/FM Delco radios that was specific to a strippo fleet model of the Chevy Caprice around 1982-83 that no one had even heard of.

But I digress….

In my exploration of dead inventory, I kept seeing references to “Super Duty Pontiac” stuff. In my head, I was thinking either early 1960’s Pontiac racing stuff or 1973-74 SD455 parts. And since I could get stuff at a dealer discount, I was scheming to snag as much as I could afford and either horde it for a later Pontiac project or sell it online. After consulting the microfiche archives, I then learned that the stuff I was looking for was short four cylinders from what I knew of. I asked one of the older counter guys, and he got a chuckle. He then produced an old GM Performance catalog from the 80’s that had tons of these Super Duke parts. I had no idea they even existed, and I don’t think I was alone in that. I think once the Quad 4 debuted, people forgot they were a thing entirely.

Sadly, I did not find any Super Duty parts actually in stock, but I DID find a bunch of early Chevy V8 “oil filter kits” for the 265 (very early Chevy Small Block V8’s didn’t have oil filters!), a brand new set of 3rd Gen Camaro/Firebird T-Tops, and even a big Geo sign that worked! We also found a discontinued 1982-84 Z28 nose for the Camaro project I had at the time, so that was cool.

I wrote about how I just discovered the former existence of flight insurance vending machines. Jesus Chrysler drives a Dodge:

Hare Krishnas, Skycaps, armrest ashtrays, luggage lockers, and white courtesy telephones…

There’s a whole collection of former air travel totems to be revealed to modern passengers.

TheDrunkenWrench:

I’ve always wondered what people were so afraid of. Humanity has a perfect flight record! We’ve never left one of them up there. You can rest assured that you WILL land, in one way or another.

There’s scores of boats at the bottom of the ocean though, maybe boater’s insurance is needed more.

Speaking of the memories that our stories dredge up, here’s one from WhattodriveToday!:

My grandparents took my brother and me to Ireland in 1978. I remember them purchasing policies from a vending machine at the airport. I wasn’t scared of flying until that moment. Added bonus: we flew on a 747. I think we were the only kids on the plane. They let us talk to the pilots in the cockpit, and go up the spiral stairs to the 2nd floor lounge. Great memory.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Topshot image graphic: Chevy