Discussion Forum - Northstar Chevelle Club

I was reading my June issue of Muscle Machines and noticed an interesting article about shipment data on '65-72 Chevelles, Camaros and Novas. Evidentially, information that has not been previously available is being sold through NCRS regarding when and to whom GM vehicles were shipped from the factory. Being somewhat of a history buff about my car, I drank the "cool aid" and sent my hard earned dollars to NCRS for whatever history they could provide on my car.  I received a very official letter from them stating, "The GM official production date was 6/5/1969 and the original delivery dealer was dealer code 343 in zone 3". That was kind of a let down but, fortunately the NCRS website allowed me to decode the dealer information to Hauss Chevrolet in East St. Louis, Il.  Through the wonder of the internet, I was able to learn a great deal about Hauss Chevrolet. The good news is I had a starting point of a trail for more information about the birth information on my car. The bad news is that Hauss Chevrolet closed it's doors in the early 1980's.  I have been able to track down about 10 relatives of Frank Hauss who opened the dealership, operated it for 60 some years and eventually died in 1995 at the ripe old age of 102. It seems the trail has once again grown cold.  I have been trying to contact one of Hauss' granddaughters still living in the area to see if there might be a custodian of records of the old dealership but I am not holding my breath.  While doing an internet search I found an old "thank you" letter to a Chevy dealer in St. Louis that was signed and had a phone number on it. Being inquisitive I called the number and talked to an 80 year old retired police officer from East St. Louis.  During his early years he built 348 and 409 engines for racing.  He knew the Hauss family personally.  He said Frank Hauss had a great Chevy dealership until about 1980 when GM can t town and wanted him to expand to carry a full line of GM vehicles.  He told GM he wasn't interested, and closed his dealership so he didn't have to comply with GM's orders. (One big set there!). I also spoke with one of the record keepers at Allied Vaughn who handles records for the GM Heritage Center regarding these shipping records. He acknowledged they were in fact legitimate but he is still in the dark as to why his company, the "official" record custodian for GM did not get these records from GM and the  National Corvette Restores Society did.  Maybe the NSA knows the whole story.

My question is... Has anyone else gone ahead and gotten the shipping records for their cars from NCRS and if so has it lead to any great historical discoveries about their cars?