Up From Clay: A 1959 Fisher Body Film

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See the auto body production process up close and in detail in this 1959 Fisher Body movie entitled Up From Clay. 

 

As car enthusiasts, we tend to dwell on the more glamorous parts of auto body production, if you will—the stages that take a body design from the sketchpad to the clay modeling studio. This 1959 film from the Fisher Body division of General Motors takes a rather different approach. Here, the clay model is more of a stepping-off point in the body manufacturing process. Hence the name: Up From Clay. 

As we can well imagine, automobile body production is a fiendishly complicated and elaborate process. That was true in 1959, and it’s still true today. There are many illuminating points in the film, but one of our favorites came at around the 11-minute mark with the die profiling phase, sometimes known in the biz as Kellering. Here, gigantic Keller die-tracing machines transfer the contours and surfaces of the prototype parts, in pantograph-like fashion, onto the stamping dies that create the production components. Welding, trimming, and painting are also covered in the story, naturally, and for a razzle-dazzle moment, at the 10-minute mark a new ’59 Impala Sport Sedan is treated to a rude rollover test. Enjoy the film.

 

8 thoughts on “Up From Clay: A 1959 Fisher Body Film”

  1. In their time, the Keller machines were the wonders of the world in mass production. It’s digital CMM now of course.

    • The audio quality is not great, but it is no worse than other videos we have featured. The trouble may be on your end.

  3. Normally, the videos you display are of very high quality. However, when I came to watch this one, there was no sound at all. I live in Mexico and sometimes, notably with some videos on the NYT website, a message will come up to say it is not available in my area. Was this a variation of that? Whatever, I consider it a fluke. I enjoy the offerings on this site immensely and thank the editors for consistently high quality articles. Thank you!

    • We host our videos on YouTube and the platform is subject to a number of issues of that nature. It’s not optimum, but it’s the best available. In this case the trouble may be in your browser.

  4. Spraying that lacquer without breathing protection had a definite effect on the men hand-spraying the bodies. 25:00 ish.

  5. No problem with the audio here.

    I wonder how many of those jobs are now done by robotics. Better in the workers that are left.

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