The year the line stopped
A 174-day strike shut the only Camaro plant. A retrospective reprinted in GM's archive says about 1,100 unfinished cars were scrapped over the cost of meeting the next model year's requirements, and production hit its lowest figure for eighteen years.
On April 7, 1972, the UAW struck GM's Norwood, Ohio assembly plant, stopping Camaro and Firebird production. A report dated October 10 in The Militant's October 20 issue described a 174-day strike and a settlement negotiated in Detroit on September 27. Settlement did not mean the whole workforce immediately returned.
The only plant
Norwood was an old plant with a single job that mattered here. It had opened on August 13, 1923, on a site between two rail lines just outside Cincinnati, and at its peak employed nearly 9,000 people. It had built Impalas and Novas, but by 1972 it was the only factory building the second-generation Camaro and Firebird. The Van Nuys plant in California had built Camaros as recently as 1971, but it did not build the 1972 cars. When Norwood stopped, both cars stopped, and there was no second line to pick up the slack while the two sides negotiated.
Why they walked out
The dispute was about the plant itself. GM had long run Norwood, like many of its assembly sites, as two operations under one roof: a Fisher Body line that built the bodies and a Chevrolet line that finished the cars. The company consolidated the two under a single management, and a consolidated plant needed a new contract. UAW Local 674 and GM could not agree on one, and the local went out in April. The strike ended only when workers ratified an agreement reached in Detroit a few days before the end of September. By then thousands of workers had lost five and a half months of wages, and the city of Norwood had lost the tax revenue that went with them.
It was not Norwood's first long walkout. Historian Timothy Minchin writes that after the 1970 national GM strike, Norwood workers stayed out over local conditions until February 1971, and UAW leader Emil Mazey later called it a seven-month strike. The 1972 strike began just 14 months after that one ended.
Eleven hundred unfinished cars
The Camaro White Book retrospective reprinted in GM's 1972 archive kit describes roughly 1,100 partially assembled 1972 Camaros left when the strike ended. Its account says they were scrapped because bringing them into compliance with 1973 bumper and emission requirements would have cost too much. That is the book's explanation, rather than a separately verified factory disposal record.
The reprint describes unfinished cars separately from its 68,651-car production total. Those 1,100 cars should not be added to that total to reconcile it with the alternative 68,656 figure. Other accounts differ on the unfinished cars and their fate; the notes below retain those differences.
The numbers
The year finished at 68,656 Camaros in most accounts, the lowest single-year total from the car's 1966 launch until 1990, eighteen years later. The Camaro White Book, reprinted in GM's own information kits, gives 68,651, built from 4,821 six-cylinder cars and 63,830 V8s; the other figure breaks down as 4,824 and 63,832. Neither has been traced to a GM production record, and the gap is five cars. Either way, production had fallen by more than 40 percent from 1971.
The cars that were built had a strange final year. Prices actually fell in December 1971, when the federal 7 percent excise tax on cars was repealed. Every engine was now rated in SAE net horsepower. The SS 396 was sold for the last time, and only 970 were built; it had not even been certified for sale in California. No regular-production Camaro would offer a big-block engine again.
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The cancellation that may not have been
It was around this point that GM is said to have considered dropping the Camaro and Firebird entirely, to simplify compliance with the safety, emissions and fuel-economy rules arriving in sequence, and to have backed off after pushback from dealers and owners.
It is a widely repeated account rather than a documented decision. It appears in multiple independent retrospectives, and it is entirely plausible given the documented production collapse and the regulatory pressure of the moment. But no GM planning document has surfaced showing that the decision was seriously on the table, as opposed to enthusiast-press shorthand for a period when everything about the car's future looked precarious.
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What came after
After settlement, model changeover still limited the number of Norwood workers called back, according to the October 10 report. The Camaro stayed. Production recovered to 96,751 for 1973, larger bumpers arrived for 1974, and by 1979 the same body was setting the Camaro's all-time record of 282,571 (see 1979).
Norwood outlived the crisis by fifteen years. On August 26, 1987, “Black Wednesday” in the city, GM closed the plant. The last car off the line was a red Camaro IROC-Z, raffled to plant employee Wendell Spurlock, and 4,200 jobs went with it. Mayor Joseph Sanker called it a “death knell blow inflicted by General Motors on the citizens of this community.”
See 1972 and the second generation.
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Did you know
- The Camaro White Book reprint in GM's archive describes a 117-day strike, without defining the counting basis. The contemporary October 20, 1972 Militant report gives 174 days. The different figures remain attributed; the shorter figure is not assumed to mean working days or to be a typographical error.
- The reference-book reprint describes 1,100 partially assembled models being scrapped. Other accounts differ: the Enquirer describes incomplete cars on the line, Ate Up With Motor describes completed cars finished too late to sell as 1972s, and an enthusiast site says some were scrapped or donated to vocational schools. These are competing accounts, not a traced factory disposal inventory.
- Norwood's site began as circus grounds. The Enquirer reported in September 1922 that GM had bought 16 acres in Norwood formerly used as circus grounds and a ball field. Local boosters predicted a boom; the Cincinnati Post joked that Norwood might have to annex Cincinnati. The plant was to employ 2,100 and finish 300 cars a day.
- At full stretch Norwood was a machine. The Cincinnati Post reported in 1971 that workers completed 55 autos an hour, about 1,300 vehicles a day across three shifts.
Sources for these details
- Timothy J. Minchin, "'A Gallant Fight': The UAW and the 1970 General Motors Strike," International Review of Social History 68:1 (2023) Reference
- Camaro White Book retrospective reprint, printed p. 34, GM archive PDF p. 61 Historical reference-book reprint in GM archive
- Cincinnati Enquirer, "How 'Black Wednesday' stalled Norwood's engine" (via Yahoo News) Newspaper
- Ate Up With Motor, "Getting the Lead Out: The 1970-1981 Chevrolet Camaro" Reference
- SS396.com, "1972 Camaro Parts and Restoration Information" Reference
- The Militant, October 20, 1972, printed p. 21 (report dated October 10) Contemporary newspaper report; includes worker interviews