Re: [DML] what does the vin# mean?

[Henry Breer <hbreer@xxxx>]

Casey,

The VIN Numbers are ROUGHLY chronological.
1. No one has a complete, factory printed, list of the VIN's produced. One probably exists, but it is most likely filed away in some lawyer's office as evidence for the bankruptcy and other lawsuits. Now
that everything is settled (?) we might see one on eBay.
2. There appears to be 'missing' VIN numbers in the sequence(s).
3. The 12xxx series cars appear to have been pulled from the assembly line, sent off site for the RHD conversion, and re-(vin)numbered.
4. Some other cars have VIN plates with production dates 'out of sequence'. It is possible that there were assembly problems with these cars and they were set aside, the problem corrected, and the car
completed at a later time.

Knut Grimsrud has been working on a list he calls the Production Chronology for the past few years. It is very extensive, but not yet complete (i.e.. your car is not listed.) see
http://dmcnews.com/faq/img/news/n_vinlst.pdf The two closest cars to yours on his list are 10255 and 10260, but neither of them show manufacturing dates. The two closest cars that do show dates are
10251 and 10270, both of which were Dec-81 manufacture. Yours probably is too, right?

An excellent discussion of what the characters of the vin number mean was created by Rob Lamrock and can be found in the DML archives at http://dmcnews.com/backissues/dml272.html

Hank Breer
VIN 1141

Cameron Putsch wrote:

> I am now vin# 010259 and I am curious to find out if the cars vin numbers are in cronological order so I can tell which number mine was off the line. Other than that what does all that other jaz mean?
>
> Casey
>