MQ or MP?

[Mr70]

Keith
What issue in 1988?
I have them all here & can not find what issue you reference.
That is a Very interesting letter.Who is Ray?
That line about the exhaust manifold date is odd.I would think naturally the exhaust manifolds would pre date the engine assembly date.
The MC suffix is 427/390HP 1969 Chevrolet SS 427 w/HD clutch.

I have a Tonawanda Production book from Fran Preve,and it states for 1969:
277 MQ Manual Trans.427 engines assembled.
96 MP TH400 427 engines assembled.
---
373 Total engines assembled.
323 Total COPO Chevelles built,including 99 Yenkos.
= 50 service engines left over.

[SuperNovaSS]

MR70, I thought the exact same thing when I read that. Maybe the caps were supposed to read AFTER rather than BEFORE.

Jason

[Keith Tedford]

The person I was writing to was Raymond Hurst of Campton, Kentucky. He wasn't sure what he had but all the numbers seemed to match. The car hadn't been restored at the time, but the pictures sure indicated a COPO car, including the MP engine code. I think it is the same blue Chevelle that is in the centre of Mike Meuller's "Chevelle 1964-1972" book. 1988 was only a guess on my part as to when the article was written. It might have been some time after that. As for the number of engines, the letter speaks for itself. I just passed it on. It is my understanding that the number of service engines built was, as a rule of thumb, roughly 10% above the number that were actually put into production. However, these would be CE coded for counter sales and warranty and not be MP or MQ coded. I would think that the MP and MQ engines would be scheduled for assembly line production. I think that the 323 number itself is just an estimate and not an exact number. Who knows? The letter is interesting and if we get enough of this material together perhaps we will make some sense of it all.

[Verne_Frantz]

Keep in mind that Fran's numbers are for total engine assemblies built and shipped "per (calendar) year". There is no breakdown as to how many were shipped to assembly plants or Service Parts warehouses. There is also no breakdown as to engines assembled for "model year" rather than calendar year. It's nice to know the "total", but I doubt those numbers have any relationship at all to the number actually installed in a car, one year or another. There is no way to extract those numbers from Tonawanda totals.

Verne

[Mr70]

Agree Verne.
I always thought Frans research numbers were conservative.