Gas Filler

[studegary]

There were approximately 100 Avantis built for the 2001 through 2007 model years.  They all had their gasoline fillers on the same side of the vehicle.  True or False and give reason/justification (a simple guess would give a 50/50 chance of being correct)?

[Gunslinger]

False.  My '02 has it on the left side.  You can take a look at the 2005 Avanti for sale on eBay right now and the gas filler is clearly on the right side.  My guess would be Avanti Motors located it on whichever side the TransAm or Mustang platform had the filler located on the tank.

[studegary]

Gunslinger - You are correct and for the reason cited.  

I thought that some may think that the bodies were all the same, which they aren't.  

I also wanted to interject another trivia question to help settle down some recent turmoil.  

[Gunslinger]

One of the reasons Avanti Motors went under in the '80s and early '90s was the fact they did not have a dedicated and proprietary chassis.  They were at the mercy of GM...whenever GM made a model change to the platform a complete redesign of the Avanti body was required.  I remember reading (maybe in the AOAI magazine?) an article by the guy who was responsible for redesigning just the door and its internals for Avanti each time a new chassis was sourced.  The effort was not small for the doors alone...it must have been an incredible and expensive undertaking for the entire body to be redesigned while retaining the classic Avanti shape.  For such a low production vehicle it had to have added a lot of money to the MSRP to be able to amortize those costs across such few vehicles.  Eventually sales suffered as buyers wouldn't pay the prices needed to maintain profitability.

There were far more problems with the company but constant redesigns had an effect.