[V8Vairs] How many Crown kits were sold and what is the best guess of how many are on the road these days?

[lanning14 at aol.com]

ADE
It's good to hear from you. Hope that you are feeling better these days.
What you are reporting sounds rather surprising, but if you heard it from the horses mouth, that's good enough for me. The number of Crown kits produced in Ted's shop that I've heard reported over the years only numbers around 1500 or slightly higher. That's a whole lot less than the number that you are reporting, but maybe Ted sold a bunch of output shafts that were not part of his kits.

I'm just curious, why would anyone order that many output shafts in one year? I understand that the price would be less per unit in large quantities. Do you think that GM required an order of that size for them to do business with you? That many shafts would last a long time unless your business was booming. In the day at a conservative price, what would estimate the value of 15,000 output shafts?
I plan to copy your email and place it in my Ted Trevor file along with other tidbits of information. I have a contact in CA who was the Crown office manager. If her number is still active, I'll ask her if she remembers ordering that many shafts in 1967.
Thanks for this piece of history.
John
In a message dated 11/9/2019 10:14:14 AM Eastern Standard Time, ade383 at hotmail.com writes:

Ted told me he ordered 15,000 full size Saginaw output shafts from GM in 1967 to modify for CorV8 kits. Yes that is not a typo, fifteen thousand. I was stunned when he told me too. GM sent a team (8-10 as I recall the story) of engineers to Crown Mfg. because they thought there was a defect. When Ted showed them what he was up to they all had a good laugh and went back to GM reporting no issues. Ted said he estimated 5 thousand conversions went for Corvairs, 5 thousand for kit cars (Mantas, Lazer 917s and such) and 5 thousand for buggies and off road cars... ADE________________________________From: V8Vairs <v8vairs-bounces at corvair.org> on behalf of Paul Siano <paulsiano at yahoo.com>Sent: Tuesday, November 5, 2019 6:02:20 AMTo: V-8 Vairs <v8vairs at corvair.org>Subject: [V8Vairs] How many Crown kits were sold and what is the best guess of how many are on the road these days?
Paul Siano_______________________________________________V8Vairs mailing listV8Vairs at corvair.orghttp://www.vv.corvair.org/mailman/listinfo/v8vairsThis list sponsored by the Corvair Society of America, http://www.corvair.org/_______________________________________________V8Vairs mailing listV8Vairs at corvair.orghttp://www.vv.corvair.org/mailman/listinfo/v8vairsThis list sponsored by the Corvair Society of America, http://www.corvair.org/