I was removing rust from the underside of my '69 and the letters "BUIC" appeared. They are stamped on the sheet metal on the right rear, under the trunk pan. Was this S.O.P. at the factory? Why did they omit the "K"? Am I the only one who wasn't aware of this? I took pics so you can see what I am talking about. One pic shows the right rear bumper bracket for reference.
That happens al the time: pics too big or wrong format. But yeah: please try to repost the photos Are the letters small, or something like on the tailgate of this home-made 1955 Buick truck? (or maybe the size of the BUICK letters on a 90's Buick rubber trunk mat?)
I've seen "BUIC" stamped into the trunk pan of a '67 inside the trunk, not under the car. I have a photos somewhere. The car came from a GMAD assembly plant that built not only Buicks but other GM brands as well. So maybe that's what the sheet metal was stamped?
Thanks to George and the rest of you for responding. Sorry the pics didn't go through--they appear on my screen, so I assumed they were good to go. I had the same theory as Gary--maybe there was a need at some B-O-P plant to keep the different marques separated because they weren't interchangeable. I just found it weird that they would only spell the first 4 letters of Buick. It saved on tooling ? Maybe it was a Monday or Friday and someone goofed up?
Seems likely that you used a link to the photos on your machine, so the web page can show them to you, but when other people's web pages try to load them, they can't because they are on your machine. You need to post the actual photo data into your post or use the "upload a File" button (at the bottom).
Yep I bet you are right, Max. Or, in my case, I did a "copy & paste" that apparently had the same result. I'm glad my Buick is easier to understand than computers are. Here is one more try, but this time I will copy and paste directly from the images in my previous post. And now, in case that failed which it probably did, I will try using the "upload" method. If it doesn't work, I may take my computer out to the shooting range and use it for target practice.
They likely had a 4 digit code for each brand. Probably as simple as some limit on the digits the stamper supported. E.g. it might be the same one that supported date or time codes.
That makes sense and is probably the real reason, but I like the "Hungover factory worker on the Monday shift" explanation better.
Fisher Body often used a numbering system to code their parts and stamped all kinds of sheet metal that way. They would stamp the "body style" code into the parts to ID them. For the A-bodies they picked a generic "skylark" body number and used that. If you look at any 70-72 Buick A-body tulip panel (the panel between the trunk lid and the rear window) you will see this number stamped in the center of the panel just forward of where the trunk gasket sits. When the trunk lid is closed it hides this number. I often hear Guys talking about "hidden vin numbers on the rear of the car. They are mistaking these numbers for the beginning of the vin number. Duane
