M51 Sunroof Option

Postby chal340 » 29 Dec 2003 21:58

There is a car on E-bay that has the M51 option, factory power sunroof. There was a message on there that provided information about contacting American Sunroof Corporation, who installed the sunroofs on the cars.

Does anyone have any info on how or where to contact this company, if it is still in business which I doubt. I am attempting to retain the necessary parts to repair the sunroof. I realize it may be extremely difficult.

Anyone with any imput would be appreciated.
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Postby Christer » 30 Dec 2003 9:26

I seems like this company is alive and kicking.... :)

Good luck! http://home.primus.ca/~triton/asc/
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Postby dave-r » 30 Dec 2003 10:33

The sunroofs were done by both Creative Industries and ASC. The parts do not interchange. I cannot find all my notes on this so I am not sure if the factory ever fitted the sunroofs themselves after a point?

ASC had offices in LA, St. Louis and Detroit and CI just had Detroit.

Heinz Prechter (the founder of ASC) came to Detroit from LA in 1968 to install sunroofs in Mercury Cougars, the first American car to have a factory built sunroof. He built a small asembly line in Ecorse, a Detroit suburb, in a rented building to do the Cougars.

http://www.detnews.com/2002/specialrepo ... -12566.htm
Last edited by dave-r on 30 Dec 2003 10:59, edited 1 time in total.
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Postby dave-r » 30 Dec 2003 10:53

Ah! Found my notes.

Chrysler began in-house factory sunroof installations for the '73 model year.

ASC started doing Chryslers in Detroit around late 1970? So I assume any made before that were CI for sure. Chrysler then used both companies.

ASC's St. Louis facility opened around July 1971?

ASC's LA facility opened in Summer '72.

Cars made in plants outside Detroit before 1971/72 had to be shipped to Detroit and back again to have a Sunroof fitted.
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Postby dave-r » 30 Dec 2003 11:11

Sunroofs (at least the early ones on 69/70 Chargers) which were done by Creative Industries had their doors pre-built, with black headliners and black vinyl top material.

So what does this mean if your Charger had a different colour headliner?

It got spray-painted. And when they did, they didn't remove the coathooks, didn't remove the seatbelt holders, didn't even remove the mouldings.
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Postby dave-r » 30 Dec 2003 11:13

More from my notes.

ASC stuff carried over to the manual-crank units found in A-bodies.
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