What exactly does "SCO" mean?

Discussion in 'The "Paper Trail"' started by 442w30, Jul 29, 2009.

  1. philip roitman

    philip roitman Well-Known Member

    Thanks. My 1973 Sun Coupe has a SCO tag that the Sloan documents say they think it is because of the code O for other one of 4 built paint. The car is Body by Fisher # is 000092. I always thought the later VIN 15,6XX was because of the SunRoof, the car is a Stage1 Sun Coupe 1 of 45 built and the car was being taken off the line to go to ASC for the Sun Roof. Still not sure though. The car was Co;umbus Zone Office ordered and has virtually every option except Cruise control and a block heater.
     
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  2. BadBrad

    BadBrad Got 4-speed?

    This has been fun reading. Mine's one of those Riv-only-color cars (code 16-16 Tealmist grey) and the only GS455 painted as such at the Fremont plant. The firewall was even painted body color although I've since shot black spraybomb over it because the factory color was really oxidized and horrible looking after 300,000 California miles. Just over the transmission tunnel on the firewall, written in chalk, greasepen (whatever they used) - "Spec". Have Sloan documentation on this car. Mike Trom's Monroney sticker ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroney_sticker ) - fun reading there - indicates option 3P GM Special Paint - Buick $76.25 Nothing special stamped on the cowl tag other than the upper/lower paint code.


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  3. 69 GS 400

    69 GS 400 Well-Known Member

    Well if you ever want to get rid of that high mileage non popular color car seeing it is not brown or green , let me know. ; )
     
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  4. mbryson

    mbryson Owner of Ornery grandma Buick


    That is a sexy color
     
  5. rolliew

    rolliew Well-Known Member

  6. Duane

    Duane Member

    SCO 751 means it was the 751st SCO car built that year. It will not tell you what makes it a SCO car.

    71-72 Convertibles were not available with bucket seats, so if your car has buckets and a console, then that is most likely why it was a SCO car.
    Duane
     
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  7. BUQUICK

    BUQUICK I'm your huckleberry.


    The A51 on the tag means bucket seats so that confirms why it has SCO in the Trim section of the data plate.

    Because it's a SCO car it also has a low body number despite being a later car (it was built 2nd week of May 1972).

    I think this same GS 350 convertible has been discussed here on V8Buick in the past. It is also a special-order paint car (code 19 is black paint which was special-order only on the '72 GS). A very neat and rare car with the bucket seats and special-order paint.

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  8. Duane

    Duane Member

    I think the reason for the low body number was because it was a GS convertible (43467) and not due to the SCO. They made very few convertibles, hence the low body number.

    The only cars I have seen where they “held back” a batch of low body numbers for SCO’s was for the 71-72 (43437) body style (GS Coupes).

    That is the easiest way to determine a 71-72 SCO coupe.

    This stuff was all based off the “Fisher Body” body style numbers.
    Duane
     
    Last edited: Aug 11, 2023
  9. Mart

    Mart Gold level member

    Yes...Special Corporate Order.
     
  10. BUQUICK

    BUQUICK I'm your huckleberry.

    The low body number for this car is because of the SCO and/or the special-order paint. They did use the held-back low body numbers for 43467 convertibles too, not just for the 43437 coupes. For 1972 at Flint, the body number assignments were not based on the body style number. The body numbers for the convertibles were much higher than the number of cars produced (there were only 852 1972 GS convertible built (645 GS 350, 126 GS 455, 81 GS Stage 1)). The black GS350 convertible has a body number of 912 which is higher than the total of GS convertibles made in '72.

    Here are two other '72 GS convertibles built at Flint that are NOT SCO cars but very EARLY in the year (August of '71 and Sept '71) that show that the body numbers used for convertibles far exceeded the total number of GS convertible built. This shows that body numbers assigned to the GS were not dependent on being a hardtop or convertible. Look at how high the body numbers were even at the beginning of the model year:

    Our '72 Stage 1 convertible was built the 2nd week of August '72 and is the 2nd Stage 1 convertible built for the 1972 model year and has a body number of 010128.

    upload_2023-8-11_11-19-39.png


    And this is a '72 GS455 convertible my dad restored. It was built the 3rd week of Sept '71 and by that point the body numbers were really high, 042644.
    upload_2023-8-11_11-21-54.png


    Now compare that it to the SCO car that was built ~8 months later than these two cars and then compare it to another GS 350 convertible that was built the same week 05B. The SCO car has a body number of 000912 and the non-SCO car with a bench seat has a body number of 256913:
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    Here are tags for two another '72 GS convertible that is a SCO because of bucket seats. Built in Nov '71 and March '72. They have low body numebrs and they don't have the leading 000 in front of the body number.
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    Last edited: Aug 11, 2023
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  11. BUQUICK

    BUQUICK I'm your huckleberry.

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