Okay, one more. What I heard and if I'm wrong wouldn't be the first time, and I don't care. Fisher Body had a few 61 Impala tops left over and used them on the 62 Bel Aire accounting for the low production of the '62 Bubble top.
Remember, GM assembly plant doesn't make the motor or the transmission or the rear end or the body, they just assemble them from other shops.
I did go back and re-read post 107023 but there is no info there that shows the use of the word in the assembly plants and no info on the use of the term in print. Here is a good thread from awhile back: It depends what time period that you are talking about. I never heard the term bubble top before 1962. I even owned a 60 Bel Air ht. The term never existed until 1962. The 62 roof line was a big change. The Bel Air got the nick name "bubble top 62" to differentiate it from the 62 Impala HT roof line.. The guys with the 61s later adopted the term but no one ever referred to a 61 HT as a bubble top until after the 62s had established the nick name. Was it different on the west coast? I don't know I lived on the east coast. Dave Strickler and the other super stockers established it as an iconic image of a 62 409 race car. They ran 61s with the same roof the year before but no body called it a bubble top in 1961. It was just a 61 Chevy with a 61 roof. There are a lot of things in history that get blurred over time. A reasonable person would think that the 61 roof line was a bubble top also if you were not there. That is where the rub comes in. Shoe box, bubble top, Kelsey Hayes wire wheels are all terms that have taken on different meanings that are applied to different things than the term was initially coined for. To me calling a 61 HT a bubble top is misusing the original definition of the nick name. I love the 61 Catalina and yes I have referred to it as a bubble top because that top only existed for 2 years. The meaning has changed through the years. To imply that a 60 Chevy HT was a bubble top is just plain WRONG. IMHO TOMMY, APR 7, 2009 SHARE POST#84
Could be…were there enough Chevrolets tops for a full year run? I guessing if there wasn’t they took all the 61 left over Pontiacs, Oldsmobiles, and Buicks and did it that way. BOP’s had only formal roofs like the 62 Impalas. This would make sense using up an over stock on a “less expensive” model of Chevrolet’s and leave the more expensive GM cars with all formal tops.
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