A Look Back

Do you know what 100 million of anything represents? If you thought about nails, nuts, bolts, tacks or small items you wouldn’t be impressed at all. There are certainly more than 100 million of these types of items created each and every day and noting about them impresses us at all. On the other hand when it’s a production of something that takes a wide variety of moving parts and you have created any number of them the total can be impressive. When it comes to our cars we love to celebrate the numbers we have witnessed as they have been achieved.

In 1967 General Motors celebrated the 100 millionth car that came off the assembly line at the Janesville, Wisconsin plant. When you think about all the items and technology that go into making even one car its seriously impressive that a company can make it to the number GM did at that time. Considering the fact the company hadn’t even been in business for 100 years yet this showed a massive amount of production each year to reach this point as early as they did, with well over one million cars built and sold each and every year.

When you picture 100 million cars lined up together there would be rings around the globe of these cars, they would fill every parking lot on the planet and you couldn’t stretch them into space without them floating away. From the earliest models to some of the sports cars and the family sedans to the pickup trucks GM had produced cars for every walk of life for us to use and enjoy. These 100 million examples of quality and engineering that had developed from only a couple of horsepower to over 300 in some versions gave us a wide range of vehicles to admire.

Which car was the 100 millionth to come off the assembly line? You might think it would have been a model that we admire more than any other, but the reality is this was a simple Chevrolet Caprice coupe in the Marina Blue color that had vinyl bench seats. This was a car that many drove and enjoyed, but not one that reached in and touched your imagination in any way at all. This car was put in GM’s Sloan Museum in Flint, Michigan. As such, this car has never been sold or used on any road as it stands as a trophy to the high quality and longevity of General Motors.

Will GM reach 200 million cars? If they haven’t already there is no doubt they will in the near future. Certainly they are on their way to this number globally, but in the US this may be a different story. What will be the car that makes this next mark on our automotive society? Will it too just be a trophy and will it be a simple model that happens to be the run of production being made or with GM purposely make number 200 million a car that piques our imagination?