More details from Jack, membership +1
Hi, Brian; I finally perused the site in total. Good job on disseminating the info. Great site, too. I'll have to join up.
As an additional answer, you and some of your members ( Eagle Fish and Marco) are observant as to the black-out effect on the vehicles on the car haulers (I was misunderstanding the original question).
For a starter: We had die-cut masks that would allow us to black-out out the headlight recesses with paint. A decal would not be workable because of the tight compound surface development. The original proposal was to have removable darkened plexi headlight covers to smooth out the nose a'la racecar but a durable, feasible solution was quite involved plus GM Legal didn't want to sponsor any hint of the final customer being responsible for making his/her vehicle meeting the FMVSS lighting "road rules" at his/her option.
This leads to the blackened lower grille which I think you folks are referring to. At the same time we painted the headlight recesses we also painted this lower center area in that semi gloss black. This didn't require a die cut mask, just three strips of wide masking tape. I believe we let the paint just fade and over spray under the valence as the front air dam install would clean this up to a knife edge paint break.
BTW, the black Monza in the bone yard may have been a different vehicle than the MATC1 in the photos. I believe the pin stripes on the gold are far too small. I'll see if I can find more photos. You guys are good! You are all bringing back memories; many are for me faded and I wouldn't bet for a minute than y'all can probably correct me on some points.
Hope this helps and I'll get back w/ you in a couple of days. Kind regards...jack