Like A Kid In A Candy Store. It’s an apt description of how I feel every time I enter places like this. I may be a tired adult instead of a hyperactive child, and the treats may be made of chrome and plastic rather than chocolate and butterscotch, but the overall feeling is the same.
For over two decades, Original Parts Group has been a premier supplier of factory-licensed OEM replacement parts and accessories for General Motors A-body vehicles. Prior to that, they used to be called Ausley’s.
The story behind OPG and its indirect crosstown rival, Classic Industries, is an interesting one. The two stores are owned by siblings. In a gentleman’s agreement, the two businesses handle entirely different model lines to avoid cannibalizing each other’s business. Original Parts Group handles all the GM A-body stuff as well as GM’s specialty personal luxury vehicles, including the Monte Carlo, Grand Prix, Riviera, and Eldorado. They also take care of 54-76 full sized Cadillacs and the 62-64 Pontiac Catalina. In more recent years, they’ve added the 78-88 G-body to their inventory.
By contrast, Classic Industries services the GM B-body, F-body, and X-body crowd, as well as C/K trucks. More recently, they’ve branched out into the Tri-Five market. They now even have a huge selection of vintage Mopar goodies.
As you can see, Original supplies every bit of A / G body minutae that one can think of. Which is exactly why myself and my good buddy, also named Chris, were there on a cool and breezy Monday afternoon a few weeks back. Chris was picking up a sheetmetal patch panel for his ’67 Chevelle–a car that’s been in his family since he was born. I was there picking up some odds and ends for my 1971 GMC Sprint. As many here will recall, my ’71 Sprint was the subject of my very first CC article. After letting it languish for nearly two years, the expensive storage fees (as well as a good-natured kick in the backside from Paul over my project malaise), finally spurred me to start working on it again.
The first thing to catch my eye was this trio of A-beauties crammed into the far corner of OPG’s showroom. All these cars have been featured as OPG catalog cover models at one time. Together, they symbolize some of GM’s best years before the EPA, OPEC and GM’s own dysfunctional upper management brought it all crashing down. That’s my pal Chris drooling over the black ragtop.
This gorgeous black ’65 Malibu convertible is a more recent addition to OPG’s fleet of model and display vehicles, all lovingly restored using the company’s parts exclusively. From what I understand, ALL the cars featured in OPG catalogs are privately owned by the company’s owner. What a lucky dude.
The car’s original 327 has been completely rebuilt from top to bottom. In many quarters, the 327 is considered to be Chevy’s best small-block ever, with an ideal rod-to-stroke ratio. With the fuel-injected Corvette version pumping out 375 horses, the 327 was truly The Mouse That Roared. This one appears to be the standard four-barrel version. It may not be the pavement-scorching monster that its fuelie and big-block siblings are, but it has more than enough oomph for most folks and is sure to provide plenty of smiles per gallon to its owner.
The open roof and spacious interior just beg for 3-4 friends, a Friday night on Hollywood Boulevard, a Saturday afternoon cruise through downtown Santa Monica, and a Sunday morning on Pacific Coast Highway.
A better shot of the car’s interior, looking as immaculate as the outside. A hot summer day with the top down, while wearing shorts, has gotta be interesting.
This green ’66 SS is an all original, matching-numbers ride that’s been restored down to the last nut and bolt. It’s also a seasoned veteran of OPG’s show fleet. In the break room at work, I have an old OPG catalog from 06-07 with this exact car on the cover. I wasn’t able to get any shots of the engine, but I’ve seen this car in person in past visits, and the original L78 396 big block is very much present and accounted for.
The ’66’s interior, complete with the goofy and essentially useless console-mounted tach. What sane, sensible person would actually take their eyes off the pavement to look at that thing- especially when the car was storming down a quarter-mile track or deserted service road, as their owners frequently called on them to do? The complicated center control panel under the radio seems to indicate that this is an air-conditioned car. One might also notice the power window switches and automatic shifter. Many hardcore purists may grumble about the extra goodies, but not me. Nothing wrong with having a little luxury to go with your muscle.
Where the ’65 looks ready for a cruise to the beach, this ’66 looks ready to attack the local drag strip. Martha! Put away yer floppy hat an’ sunglasses an’ grab yer helmet-we’re goin’ racin’!
We conclude our outing with this mint 1972, 454-powered droptop. By 1972, the Rat’s edge was dulled considerably thanks to the drastically lowered compression ratios and retarded cam timing necessary to ensure its survival in the emissions-conscious Seventies. Nevertheless, even this somewhat lazy rat still had enough grunt to entertain most folks and cook the tires with little effort. Unfortunately, the lower horsepower ratings made it no less thirsty than its tire-shredding older siblings.
The heart of the beast, complete with factory cowl induction. 1972 was getting pretty close to the end for factory big-block Chevelles. After 1974, the venerable 454 would be banished forever from all of GM’s passenger cars save the massive B-bodies. In 1972 there was still some fun to be had, but the party was quickly winding down.
Despite the obvious cheapening over past years, the interior of this Chevelle still looks like a comfy and inviting place to sit for long stretches–as long as it’s not 90 degrees outside. Especially with no A/C. Still, I certainly wouldn’t kick it out of my dream garage.
A shiny big-block convertible, an open road, and the people closest to you along for the ride. What more could you ask for?
Anyone can duplicate the show cars’ mint interiors, thanks to OPG’s generous parts selection. Almost everything displayed here is for Chevelles, except for the instrument bezel at the very top. Can anyone guess what that piece fits?
More interior stuff. My Sprint needs these badly.
Tired of your crappy stock brakes? These upgrade kits give you the whoa to match your go.
Even more interior goodies.
Dear Santa…
Catalogs galore. If OPG doesn’t have it, nobody does.
All in all, it was a fun visit. Every time we go in there, there’s always something new and different. I have even more pics from a previous visit saved on my old flip phone. Once I get the chance, I’ll download those and post a second installment. There’s some other neat rides I’ve taken pics of, including a ’69 Buick Skylark GS 350 and a rare ’64 Cadillac “Eldorado” Coupe, a coupe especially ordered with full-on Eldorado trim. Stay tuned…
Sounds like a cool store! That’s how I used to get when I’d go to Exoticar model gallery as a child. They always had a huge selection of often very expensive 1/18 scale models that were rarely seen in other stores. My mom would take me there on special occasions such as birthdays and good report cards.
Looking back now as an adult, the whole place was kinda sketchy. The people working there were sketchy and would always having important business sounding phone conversations. Their Massachusetts store also moved locations like 6 times in 10 years. I feel like the model cars were a front for some cocaine ring or money laundering operation.
Interesting, I used to get the Exoticar catalogs in the mail in the late 90s/00s since I was big into 1:18 models, I ordered quite a few cars from too since they carried Autoart, Kyosho and other high end brands you can’t find anywhere else.
I guess it doesn’t speak well for my morals but I quite liked them, regardless of what they were into. Although now that you mention it I was slightly tweaked when I opened the boxs lol
As an aside there’s a store my Dad found in Chicago on Grand called Larry’s that has a ton of 1:18 cars muscle cars. Usually the rare or high end American Muscle series and Highway 61. I was in the area last summer due to a detour and figured I’d stop in, and I ended up buying two cars and chatting with the Larry himself for a half hour. I felt like I was 10 again lol
Seeing that stuff makes me wish I still had my ’70 El Camino.
Same goes for my ’78 Malibu. Nice to see the A/G cars getting some respect in the aftermarket. They do need to start making the plastic center caps for the ’78-up rally wheels. One or more of the plastic tabs that held them in place invariably became weak or broke on every tire change or rotation. They had already become scarce in GM’s parts system when I had that car back in the late ’80s.
Like A Kid In A Candy Store.
Or a kid in toy store. ( but toys are significantly more complicated and expensive though ).
That store is insane! Some pretty hot rides, too!
I almost didn’t click on this post. Glad I did! Candy store indeed. Thanks for the tour!
The strangely located tach in the ’66 SS is intriguing. Most obviously, it’s a bizarre location. But why were they so desperate to include one that they ended up sticking it in such a useless location?
Excuse my ignorance, but why would you even feel the need to know your rpm in an auto?
You don’t. But tach’s anymore were cheap to make, and made people think they were actually getting a “gauge package” Frankly, no one needs one. You either know how to drive, or you blow your engine up. And you can do that by ignoring your dipstick just as well. Engine, not the one in your pants.
The factory tach in my 2 speed auto ’64 Cutlass was tucked underneath the dash on the front of the console. I used it for setting approximate rpm after a tune up, timing adjustment, or after a carb rebuild. It was also good for setting the fast idle adjustment screw for warming up the car with the choke on. Then you would step on the gas pedal once or twice in the morning to close the choke then use the tach to monitor the engine speed. After a few minutes of warming up, I would press the throttle a couple of times until the rpm dropped and I was good to go. You could do it by ear of course but watching the tach was pretty cool!
Sixties American cars had a quaint habit of sticking the tachometer in a variety of, er, eccentric locations. On the console was fairly common, and of course we can’t forget the Pontiac hood-mounted unit (which was at least sort of in the driver’s line of sight, but still iffy on the visibility scale at night, covered with dew, or in the rain).
I think basically they were marketing/product planning decisions rather than engineering or driver-oriented ones. The product planners said a tachometer was essential for the performance image needed to capture the Youth Market, but the tach was optional and thus had to be added in some way that didn’t require altering the carefully amortized instrument panel in any significant way.
As for the automatic, people in those days did manually shift automatics in search of maximum drag racing performance (and there were automatics that were supposed to designed to facilitate that). It was a cumbersome process because you had to account for the accuracy of the tach (not necessarily so great) and whatever lag you’d get between moving the lever and actually getting a shift.
How useful that actually was even when properly executed was highly variable and kind of depended on the engine, transmission, and application. In your basic run-of-the-mill passenger car, manually shifting was pretty useless because the engine didn’t typically have the breathing or tuning for much high-end power anyway. Early in the Supercar craze, automatics weren’t necessarily set up well for the hotter engines, being biased toward smoother (and thus slower/softer) shifts and programmed to upshift early. However,by the late ’60s/early ’70s, the better automatics were typically pretty well matched to the engine right out of the box, so unless you were going to modify the powertrain, you could probably just as well leave it alone.
I have wondered what stores like this looked like on the inside. Thanks for posting.
I will take a volt meter and a vacuum gauge any day over a tachometer, much more useful. Even oil pressure gauges are not really needed with today’s oil pumps and drives, even for old school engines. By the early 80’s Japanese motorcycles simply had a level indicator; pumps/pressure was not a problem. By the time you actually notice there’s an oil pressure problem, the damage is already done.
” After 1974, the venerable 454 would be banished forever from all of GM’s passenger cars save the massive B-bodies.”
Minor nit – I believe that the last year for the 454 in A-bodies and Corvettes was actually 1975. It continued in B-bodies through 1976.
Funny thing is, I do have a tach in my ’83 5.0L Ranger. Only time I look at it is when the shift indicator light comes on at 3000 rpm’s…I am nudging the law and burning fuel…time to back off the loud pedal
I am after some interior trim bits for my 80 Fleetwood Brougham, and neither Original Parts Group or Classic Industries seem to cover Cadillacs post 76 looking at their websites. These arent parts I can just go to a wrecker and find, not in New Zealand – 70’s and 80’s Cadillacs are rare compared to the US, anyone got any suggestions?
Try Desert Valley Auto Parts in Phoenix, Arizona. They’re an all-inclusive automotive dismantler, but have a heavy bias towards GM products.
The 1977-up full-sized RWD Cadillacs haven’t been adopted by the restoration crowd yet. From what I see, it’s the Low Rider enthusiasts currently driving the market.
Thankfully, Cadillac kept so many of the parts the same between 1977 to 1992, creating a large pool of donors. Many of the Low Rider fans trick their cars out to such an extent that stock parts aren’t needed and often just taken out.
I’ve had some decent luck finding Cadillac parts on two different Facebook groups:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/571510449585735/?ref=browser
and
https://www.facebook.com/groups/232121620248645/?ref=browser
I had an Acura Integra with automatic, the tach in that car was kind of useless as the weight of the car and the transmission itself acted as a sail or anchor limiting speed. You could over-rev if you manually shifted it, I guess.
I love stores like this, if there’s anything I hate about the internet it’s the inability to just pull into a place like and drool directly onto the stuff lol.
Interesting post. Having parts suppliers like these makes it so much easier to fix up your old car. Sometimes the quality of the parts varies, but they will usually always look better than the beat up 40 year old part you took off. Last January I went to the National Parts Depot store in Ventura Ca. to pick up some parts for my Mustang. Much the same lay out. I bought some bulky items and figured I could save on shipping, since I was passing through.
One of the reasons I decided to get an early Mustang was the wide availability of parts, at swap meets and online and reproduction. It had been hard to find trim parts for my old Rivieras. My advice to Peter is to find some online Cadillac forums which will probably have parts for sale and to join an American Cadillac club. Most club members will either have parts for sale or are glad to help other club members find what they need. Good luck.
When I got my first car at 16 the JC Whitney catalog could only take so many reads before boredom set in. There was a Sears store not far away and it had a separate automotive service and accessories building. With nothing else but homework to do I would drive over and pick out which under dash gauge cluster I would buy, same with tachometer and other things I had to have. Much more productive than than homework.
Aladdins cave it is. OPGI are by first choice for parts for my ’69 Skylark. There are cheaper vendors, but OPGI get my delivery right, first time.
That’s important to me,as Australia isn’t exactly across town. Very good on warranty too.
I send pics of a transit damaged mirror, and they promptly sent a replacment.Didn’t want the damaged one back,so that went on ebay!
I have no affilation with them, just a happy customer. And the current Skylark catalogue is always on the shelf above the bathroom door!
I’m confused. Does GM still make original factory equipment parts for cars that are 50+ years old?
And call me a big nerd but I love seeing “luxury” features on middle-class cars from the sixties. How many ’66 Chevelles rolled off the assembly line with factory A/C and power windows?
OPGI’s catalogue lists parts as either genuine/ reproduction/ performance.
One example I can think of is genuine window winders (cranks) at a very high price, or repros at a fraction.
So, yes some parts are still out there. Not very many though.
The USA wasn’t alone in useless tacho positions. Here’s the interior of Holden HK Monaro GTS. The tacho wasn’t available with the factory (under dash) AC either.
This one is a 307 & Powerglide optioned car.
Holden realised their mistake & put the tacho in dash with the suceeding HT model.
And no, its not based on an Opel platform.
The top bezel on the rack is for a ’69-’72 GTO or Lemans.
Ding! Ding! Ding! Weee have a winnerrr!
Awesome post! Reading this and looking at the pictures, I got the same feeling I used to get when going into Rider’s Hobby Shop to look for 1:24 scale models. (And now I’m thinking about how to incorporate a ’71 Chevelle grille and headlamp bezels into my living space…)