Re: 1953 Caribbean Prototype

Posted by HH56 On 2017/3/10 11:29:44

As far as leaving the holes out it depends on whether they were punched at one time as part of the fender forming or individually afterwards. If all at one time, I couldn't see them going to the expense of a new die for 750 cars. I expect labor was relatively cheap so it would have been much less cost to fill a few unneeded holes. Reading Bob Neal's 51-4 book, it was a struggle to even justify the tooling costs to make the convertible and hardtops at all and to convince the board to allot the money was another exercise.

They did do something with the front fenders eventually and eliminated the holes. In 53 or 54 they found it was cheaper to make one fender for 51-4 service replacement without any holes rather than warehouse fenders for each year or model with the only difference being where holes were positioned. Maybe that was done early enough that it also applied to production cars.