Hi,

This might be a stupid question, but I have yet to see one...once production passes 100,000 cars, how does the VIN reflect that? For example, 1982 VINs start production with 500001. When the 100,00th car was built, did the VIN read 600000? I've been studying VINs for these early 3rd gens and haven't seen any as of yet (i keep track of 82, 83, and 84) that were produced after the 99,999th car. (83's that makes sense - I dont think they made over 100,000, but 82 and 84 they did).

Thank you.

J

 

The sequence numbers can be the same for the two plants so they would have to pass 100,000 for each plant before that happened, and they didn’t... at least for Firebirds. Each plant only got to 60,000 or so. I don’t remember the numbers off hand. Not sure about Camaro’s but I think they went from 100000 then rolled to 200000.

 

1984 is a perfect example of this. Norwood and Van Nuys each produced over 100,000 Camaros that year. Your right, when the sequence number reached 199999 the next car was 200000. The last Norwood Camaro in '84 had a last eight of EN200729 and the last '84 Camaro out of Van Nuys was EL260862. I had wondered this myself and started collecting VIN's on third-gen Camaros and started running across VIN's with the EL2XXXXX and then checked the build dates. The change from EL199999 to EL200000 for Van Nuys in 1984 was second or third week in April 1984 I believe.

 

It will vary from year to year, like David stated in 1984 the numbers rolled from 199999 to 200000, but in 1985 the numbers rolled from 199999 to 500000 on the Camaro. Its possible that it actually rolled to 500001 however and skiped 500000.

You should also note that Chevrolet usually started with 100001 and Pontac started with 200001.

John

 

my 82 is 5xxxxx from van nuys

its pretty damn high

i cant recall seeing any much higher than mine, if any

and it has the door panels without the window crank shaft hole plug in them(has power windows) so i know its a real late production t/a plus it didnt get its disc rear axle, again thanks to being a late production car

 

That is pretty high, mine is Van Nuys also with a seq # of 576083 and a build date of 9/30/82. No window crank shaft hole plug and drum breaks too.

 

Just very recently, there was an 82 Firebird on Ebay with a production # of 596013 built in Van Nuys. That's definately the highest I've seen.

Joe