GM Restoration Parts is simply a licensing agreement. GM has very little if anything to do with the manufacturing of any GM Restoration Parts sheetmetal. Supposedly, GM holds OER to higher standards but I don't see this happening in practice. It's my understanding that the same parts can be sold for less without the GM Resto label so go figure.
The main problem with the over seas operations are that the dies. Up until Roger Smith, GM desgined their dies for infinite life. Now they design for the expected production run. The overseas stamping of repro parts goes a step further and uses die material that is typically good for about 200 hits. Around hit #200 the lines are softened up.
Again, despite the infinite life design, GM's original dies were often not stored properly and subsequent pressings with rusted or chipped dies yielded poor results. The GM Chevy Truck fenders for '73-79 were a typical sore point for me back in my body shop days. They were little better than the Taiwan repops at 4x the cost.
Jimc2002: Thanks for the pics - that's nearly exactly how we were planning on doing it except we need to do the jam area also. My poor, butchered car had the front half of the driver's quarter incorrectly repaced at one point in its life.
Fbody69: Nice car on your site - I'm envious. Mine is no where near numbers matching but has nearly every option but A/C and is one of the first 20 cars to go down the line. That, and the fact that I bumpered towed it home more than 1000 miles (20 years ago) make it my perfect resto.
