1965, 1966, & 1967 U.S. RPO Statistics

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1965-67 U.S. Corvair Regular Production Option (RPO) Statistics

By Kent Sullivan

Source material provided courtesy of Dave Newell

This article was published in the March, 2005 CORSA Communique.

Introduction

Judging by topics on the Virtual Vairs email discussion list and conversations at CORSA events over the years, owners of 1965-67 Corvairs often wonder how rare a given option on their cars is. Chevrolet published (internally) year-end totals of factory-installed options. Some factory-installed options could also be dealer-installed as accessories, and no record was kept of those installations, or for dealer-installed accessories of any kind.

Factory-installed options fall into two categories:

bulletRegular Production Options (RPOs) – available in all of the commonly-seen dealer sales and ordering literature.
bulletCentral Office Production Orders (COPOs) – not widely publicized but available if you knew what to ask for.

Almost all Corvair factory-installed options for 1965-67 are RPOs. The 140 HP engine for 1967 was a COPO. Dave Newell, Historian for the Corvair Preservation Foundation, obtained copies of the year-end U.S. RPO reports and dug in the Chevrolet records for the Tonawanda engine plant production totals in 1967. CORSA members are the lucky beneficiaries of his eagle eye for copying irreplaceable information! Note that the actual number of 1967 cars sold with the 140 HP engine may be a small amount less than the number Dave retrieved from the engine production report, since it was common practice to make a few extras for replacement or engineering purposes.

Information from the equivalent reports for “cousins” of the Corvair is also available:

bulletChevy II (1962-67): Nova Resource
bulletCamaro (1967-69): Camaro Research Group

Dave previously provided the equivalent information for 1966 Canadian Corvair production, which was featured in the June, 2000 CORSA Communique and is described elsewhere on my site. Corvairs were not produced in Canada after 1966.

The three original reports list the quantity of each RPO produced and the percentage of cars on which it was installed, rounded to the nearest whole number. This information is of enormous value on its own but is further enhanced by:

bulletGrouping the options by Uniform Parts Classification (UPC), to be consistent with the assembly manuals.
bulletExtending the percentage calculation to include two decimal places, to make the statistics more meaningful for RPOs installed in small amounts.
bulletComparing the information across the three years.

The result of that work is shown in Table 1. Note that, like the original Chevrolet reports, the RPOs for 1965 Greenbriers are not included. Corvair forward control vehicles used a completely different set of RPOs than Corvair cars.

Table 2 gives the yearly production totals for each model year, along with a by-model breakdown. To minimize confusion, Table 1 uses the total yearly Corvair production figures to calculate all of the percentages, even when a RPO was available only on a subset of the total production. (Website exclusive: an addendum which explores the production subset question.)

The original RPO reports also contain production numbers for sedans built with two-tone paint, RPO 950. This information is listed at the end of the Body section of Table 1. Dave Newell explained: "Apparently RPO 950 was used after 1964 to account for total two-tone paint production. Prior to 1965 (when Chevy went to letter codes for paint) each two-tone combination had its own code in the 950 range. RPO 950 was last used on Corvairs to indicate a single combination in 1963 when it indicated Ermine White over Tuxedo Black."

Interestingly, in Canada, the molding on the "C" pillar that accompanied the two-tone paint was assigned a RPO (D99), which indicates that, at least theoretically, the molding could have been ordered without the two-tone paint from the Oshawa plant.

What the original RPO reports do not provide is any data on combinations of options installed beyond the “Z” option groups, as documented in the Special Items section of Table 1. The only way to get that information would be to calculate all of the combinations from the factory records for each car. Unfortunately, these production records are not available. (Canadian Corvair owners can obtain this info from GM Canada’s Vintage Vehicle Services.)

However, Dave Newell located some very interesting combinatorial info from a different source, namely the year-end powertrain production reports for 1965 and 1966. They list how many of each engine type were equipped with PowerGlide automatic transmissions. That info is presented in Table 3. This report does not break down the 3- or 4-speed transmission combinations similarly. The reason given in the report is that the manual transmissions were the same across all engine types; meaning that the engine production part numbers were the same regardless of whether the transmission was 3- or 4-speed. A review of engine block code suffixes confirms this.

Table 1: 1965-1967 Corvair Regular Production Option Statistics, grouped by Uniform Parts Classification (UPC)

RPO

Option Description

1965

1966

1967

 

Count

Percentage

Count

Percentage

Count

Percentage

Body - UPC 1 (A01 - E99)

A01

Tinted Glass – Windshield and Side Windows

22479

9.54%

8739

8.42%

2047

7.51%

A02

Tinted Glass – Windshield Only

94759

40.23%

40910

39.43%

9444

34.65%

A39

Custom Deluxe Front & Rear Seat Belts with Front Retractors (see A47 + A49 for 1965)

n/a

24811

23.92%

5273

19.35%

A47

Custom Deluxe Rear Seat Belts (see note 1)

260

0.11%

n/a

A48

Seat Belt Delete (see A62 for 1965)

n/a

see note 2

A49

Custom Deluxe Front Seat Belts with Retractors

77951

33.10%

n/a

A62

Seat Belt Delete (see A48 for 1966-67)

17462

7.41%

n/a

A64

Custom Rear Seat Belts (see note 3)

174

0.07%

standard

A67

Folding Rear Seat (500s only—standard on Monzas and Corsas)

4417

1.88%

2322

2.24%

976

3.58%

A68

Custom Center Rear Seat Belt (sedans only)

n/a

750

2.75%

A82

1966: Bucket or Bench Seat Headrests; 1967: Bench Seat Headrests (500s only)

n/a

1188

1.15%

35

0.13%

A85

Custom Deluxe Front Shoulder Belts (see note 4) (requires A39)

n/a

29

0.03%

140

0.51%

AL5

Custom Deluxe Center Rear Seat Belt (sedans only; requires A39)

n/a

198

0.73%

AS1

Custom Front Shoulder Belts

n/a

72

0.26%

AS2

Strato-Ease Bucket Seat Headrests (Monzas only)

n/a

204

0.75%

B37

Floor Mats (color keyed)

n/a

2033

7.46%

B70

Padded Dash

114143

48.46%

standard

B93

Door Edge Guards (part of Z19 in 1966)

n/a

n/a

3554

13.04%

C06

Power Convertible Top

9956

4.23%

4350

4.19%

743

2.73%

C48

Heater Delete

1867

0.79%

1050

1.01%

147

0.54%

C64

Air Conditioning

9418

4.00%

4780

4.61%

1396

5.12%

D10

Rear Door Armrests (500 sedans only—standard on Monza sedans)

225

0.10%

189

0.18%

n/a

D33

Outside Remote Control Rearview Mirror (part of Z13 in 1965 and Z19 in 1966)

n/a

n/a

569

2.09%

950

Two-Tone Paint (sedans only)

1832

0.78%

717

0.69%

178

0.65%

 

Front Suspension - UPC 3 (F40 - F99)

F41

Special Performance Front & Rear Suspension (part of Z17 in 1965)

3227

3.11%

905

3.32%

 

Rear Suspension - UPC 4 (G50 - H99)

G81

Positraction Rear Axle (all ratios)

14463

6.14%

7097

6.84%

1318

4.84%

G93

3.27:1 Rear Axle

493

0.21%

296

0.29%

standard

G95

3.55:1 Rear Axle

1988

0.84%

818

0.79%

237

0.87%

 

Engine - UPC 6 (K01 - L99)

K19

Air Injection Reactor

n/a

5627

5.42%

1316

4.83%

K46

Heavy Duty Air Pre-cleaner

600

0.25%

128

0.12%

n/a

K47

Oil Bath Air Cleaner

13842

5.88%

4929

4.75%

659

2.42%

K84

Heavy Duty Alternator (47 amp)