scottmoyer

I found a link to this VIN decoder online that has a database of individual options and how GM vehicles were built. Not sure how accurate it is. It doesn't appear to have my IROC-Z listed yet, but my Silverado appears to be 1 of 1 built and my wife's limited edition Monte Carlo SS is 1 of 534 built exactly the same (There were 1401 built but there was only 1 or 2 options available). I tested the tool with VIN numbers on eBay and it appears that 1990 is the oldest for the Camaro. I found 1 car that was listed as 1 of 1, and another that was 1 of 3 and 1 more that was 1 of 28. Have fun.

http://www.compnine.com/vid.php

TOM-1LE

Now that is cool. Thanks for posting it Scott.

My car is 1 of 1, which doesn't surprise me at all.

Stephen

iTrader: (12)

My 1987 Pontiac Trans Am GTA came back with.......

"Nothing found for that VIN Number. It may be that we don't have it in the database yet, but be sure to check that you have typed it correctly."

blacksunshine'91

iTrader: (10)

1 of 3...that is before the T-tops were added. Aside from the VIN decoder, the other exploded views of the many systems are pretty helpful as well. Great find.

Drew

iTrader: (58)

I just saw the link on another forum... I ran a handful of VIN numbers through it. 1983, 1984, 1986 x3, 1987, 1988, and 1991 x3. All of the 1991s came up, but none of the earlier cars did.

The first thing I notice is that the "build date" matches the invoice/shipped dates on my invoices. Most of the RPO code definitions are correct but a ton of obvious ones like AAA - standard equipment, and R6P - performance equipement, are missing. Also the production counts are way off. Like for my 1991 Camaro it shows only 4,767 L03 V8s when obviously the count is much closer to 60,000. Maybe they only have 4,767 L03 Camaro vins in the system?

The rarity field seems a bit off too... It says my base model 1991 Firebird 3.1L Automatic was one of 3, when I have seen dozens of 91 Firebirds with the exact same options. Meanwhile it says my 1991 Formula L98 was one of 7, when I've only sceen a handful of cars equipped the same.

It's handy as a tool for finding RPO codes based on VIN numbers, but doesn't seem to have any information that any GM dealership can't already pull up for you. It's nice to be able to have a fast easy way to find your invoice/shipped date, but again I'm not entirely sure that a dealer couldn't give you the same info.

It's neat, but not at all gospel.

mr396

All I get is,

JT

iTrader: (1)

When I ran my 1992 TA 305/5-speed Convertible VIN and another 1992 TA VIN, they both have different "Trans AM" RPO figures. One shows 663 for both WS4 & Y83 and the other shows 1,056 for WS4 and 702 for Y83. Hardtop, T-Top or Convertible, shouldn't that be the same? Different figures for WS4 and Y83?

Also shows 475 for Jamaican Yellow in 1992 on the T/A VIN I ran.

I, like you Drew, was also wondering if all the figures are skewed because they don't have all the VINs in the database, and thus, the count for RPOs may not be complete?

Drew

iTrader: (58)

Even things like L98/B2L, MD8/MXO, which both should be the same, show up as different numbers. I think the resource is definitely flawed, and the standard still holds true that all these numbers should be questioned. There's still no way of knowing exactly how rare a car is or isn't.

There is some information there in the Chart Info that is hard to find elsewhere... Like body plate decoding, and engine block stamp decoding. It's worth the trouble to dig through it a bit, but I wouldn't put money on any of the facts and figures they provide.

Edit: I got more then a few laughs out of this "how to speak GM" page.. http://www.compnine.com/chart.php?num=48793

Drew

iTrader: (58)

Wow. So did anyone else back out to the root homepage and dig around a bit? http://www.compnine.com has what looks to be almost all of the exploded diagrams and some part numbers right out of the parts and illustrations manuals. This will probably keep me busy for hours.

FYRCHKN

Wow! I didn't know my car was built 5-30-1990. But it's 1 of 47,612 which is a good thing because there is nothing original about it but the body shell. There is no information on my 89 bird though. It's a very basic 2.8/auto with a/c & tilt wheel as the only options so it's probably 1 of 70,000.

IROCZTWENTYGR8

iTrader: (1)

Doesn't have mine either.

blacksunshine'91

iTrader: (10)

That's what I was saying in my earlier post. Accurracy of the VIN decoder aside, there is a large amount of useful info on this website. I am taking a short break from downloading every one of the exploded views for my car. Awesome find!

92GTA

iTrader: (11)

Rarity...

There are 1 1992 FIREBIRD 2 DR vehicles (0.004%) matching your exact options list. There are 1 (0.004%) with at least as many options.
The rarity of your vehicle is based on an exact match of your options for your year and model.

822TRIM COMBINATION LEATHER, MED DK GRAY (2) (91) (822) 28
J42BRAKE SYSTEM,DRUM(ALUMINUM) AL BRK SYS(J42) 40
Y84TRANS AM GTA OPTION(MERCHANDISING OPTION) TRANS AM GTA(Y84) 354
18UEXTERIOR COLOR,PRIMARY (18U) EXTERIOR COLOR,PRIMARY,DK GREEN GRAY METALLIC (18U) 1,164


FYI, I tried ordering 2 NOS front fender gfx from these jokers. They sat on the order (over $550!) for a month before FINALLY answering my emails and saying they don't have them. Horrible customer service.

scottmoyer

Not really sure how they got these numbers. I ran my old 1993 Indy Pace Car. There were only 645 actual cars produced and sold, but the IPC option codefor 1993 shows 653 total produced. Again, not sure how the matches column lines up. My Monte shows that only 1401 were produced with RPO Y92 (Warner Bros Special Edition) which is correct. The other option codes are a tos up as the car was fully loaded minus an engine block heater and/or something else. Here's the results of the 1401 cars built with the Special Edition package:

There are 534 2003 MONTE CARLO SS vehicles (1.335%) matching your exact options list.
There are 838 (2.095%) with at least as many options.
The rarity of your vehicle is based on an exact match of your options for your year and model.

Maybe the information for the older cars just isn't up to date yet. They say on the page that if there is a known discrepancy, to contact them. Tis may become a good site in the future.

Drew

iTrader: (58)

I'd wonder how long this information has been up there, and if they have permission to make it public. Not that it's top secret or anything like that, but it is copyrighted. I gave thought to saving everything, but decided it'd be easier just to buy a hard copy.

90-irocdx3

iTrader: (4)

wow my car is 1 of 8. i didn't think there would be any other identical to mine.

92RS(real slow)

nothing on mine

89-bird

They had nothing on mine and there prices are way to high for me . I looked at front inner and outer bearings for my rotors and I can get the same bearings from Advance for about half the price they want .

yo soy el warg

There are businesses that reproduce factory window stickers and invoices for your car back to about 1980. All you have to do is send in your vin# and pay a fee to get them. These businesses could run every vin# they have on microfilm and get an exact count on every RPO code for every third gen car produced. Then we would all know exactly how many cars were produced with a particular available option in that year. These businesses have this information, I wonder why none of them have done this? I know there is an interest and demand for it! Such things as the number of cars of a particular model third gen with manual transmissions, wheels and tires, leather interior, paint color and interior combinations, any option that was installed could all be counted since they are on the window stickers and they have that information. Maybe these businesses can't run your vin# unless you request it. Anyway, I know that information is there if they wanted to compile all of it. Then you would know for certain just how rare your car's options are in a particular year. Keep in mind that some options are not very desirable even though they are rare!

300hpse

iTrader: (2)

Woot! Assuming this is all accurate, this is pretty exciting, and judging by all the accurate color information, I think it is.

First of all, apparently 1 of 1 (There are 1 1990 FIREBIRD 2 DR vehicles (0.005%) matching your exact options list. There are 2 (0.010%) with at least as many options.) which isnt too surprising. I always had a feeling a 1990 t/a lb9 5 speed wouldnt have a lot of exact duplicates.

The better news to me here is according to this, it is indeed a ws6, which I always suspected but could never 100% prove with the lack of a build sheet or rpo sheet.

Im going to ss all of it just incase this site goes away, lol.

edit: oddly enough, it doesnt have a build date for my car and the most limited options it has are WHEEL COLOR,BLACK (19P) - 394 and TRANSMISSION,MANUAL 5-SPEED(BORG-WARNER) 5-SPD M/TRANS(M39) - 607

t_towner

Fascinating info! It's weird how some of the cars will pull up and others wouldn't (even from the same years.)

Interesting info:

For 1992
- 572 Cars had CD Players
- 475 were Jamacia Yellow
- 9 cars had B4U RPO code (i.e. Firehawk) for 1991 although I only show 8 of the cars were actually 1991's.

Some of the 1LE info doesn't seem to match up with other websites. I need to do some more digging on this.

bdle

Nothin on mine either. Kool website though

Drew

iTrader: (58)

On the other forum where I saw this link, about 90% of the people running vins for their cars are saying the results show 1 of 1. So either there is a something wrong, or every GM car in the last 20 years is as unique as a snowflake.

JT

iTrader: (1)

My 1992 TA Convertible came with the CD player (U1A) and it shows 344 had it:



On the Jamaican Yellow, here's Tony's for his 1992 Trans AM Convertible that is JY and it shows 54:


It's showing different figures between Firebird/Trans AM/GTA hardtops and Firebird/Trans AM Convertibles (atleast 1992).

90 L98 TransAm

iTrader: (3)

It says mine is 1 of 2.

But it also says mine has the aluminum driveshaft which is news to me and not listed on my console sticker.

Guess I need to take a magnet next time I go under the car.

daveb123

Like for my 1991 Camaro it shows only 4,767 L03 V8s when obviously the count is much closer to 60,000. Maybe they only have 4,767 L03 Camaro vins in the system?

I

daveb123

Like for my 1991 Camaro it shows only 4,767 L03 V8s when obviously the count is much closer to 60,000. Maybe they only have 4,767 L03 Camaro vins in the system?

I noticed that too, then I realized that system is regarding convertibles as a separate model. If you look at the RPOs they all had, the totals are the same as the total # of cars. That means 4767 verts had L03 and the coupe totals are separate. If you look at a coupe VIN the same RPOs have different, higher totals.

Timmie

my car is a 1 of the program says.

Twin_Turbo

iTrader: (25)

My vette a 1 of 2

okfoz

I have been messing with the site... From what I can tell the numbers are from cars that are in the database. For Firebirds it only goes back to 1991 Model year.

As for the number differences between JT's CD player in the Convertible and the CD player numbers for the coups are listed differently. So total production has to be combined with both coupe and Vert. He mentioned that...

As for the AAA, not all cars apparently would have gotten the standard equipment, I know for example a 1LE may not have come with all of the "Standard equipment" At least the 1LE VINS I found did not come back as AAA... AJ3 on the other hand (which is the Airbag restraint RPO) has the same number as the total number of cars reported by the site. Now the AQ9 seats = 354 and the AR9 seats = 21980 so the numbers are the same when you add up the seats to get 22334.

I think what we have here is a mostly complete listing of the cars, the computer apparently goes through and actually compiles the information when you do a search. I have noticed that there is a lag for when compiling the information so I suspect it is compiled in real time.

What is REALLY REALLY interesting is I did a search on the first few 1991 MY cars to see when production started. The first 13 1991's were actually made on 10-30-1989, the 14th car was made on 2-14-1990. I have found some cars that have information on them in CARFAX or Autocheck that were NOT listed in this program. So for all intents and purposes this is not a perfect program with ALL of the cars.

What I have found is the information production totals appears to be accurate with the information they have... Like I mentioned before it does not appear to be 100% complete, on the Firebird side at least...

Drew,
Do this, do a search on a VIN for a V6 camaro, a LO3 camaro, LB9 camaro and a L98 camaro, add up the engine totals to see what they come back as... I have not had time yet to do it for the Camaros, but It would be interesting, it has come back 100% when you add the numbers together to the totals listed on the site...

Here are the numbers for 1992 Firebird engines:
LB9 750
LHO 13,859
LO3 6,897
L98 828

The total works out again as 22334...

I also found out that there were 60 Trans Am's in 1992 that did not get the TA taillights...

John

TTOP350

iTrader: (8)

now is that 54 yellow TA verts??? or just yellow TAs??
I know its 100percent perfect.Just kinda wondering

Rolling Thunder

Flawed as it may be i think it really goes to show how "rare" some cars really are. More specifically I think it points out how rare does not neccessarily translate to value. I cannot say how often I hear people use the term its only one of one or one of just a few as they proceed to break it down to every option imaginable lol. Yea eventually if your break it down far enough you can make just about anything somewhat unless it really is that common. Its one thing if its is something that actually really means something like an original 71 hemi cuda convertable 1 of 7 but when you have a 1 of 7 because of a certant paint color in combination with a certant interior color and opted with no ac/stick shift really who are people trying to kid that its highly valuable because of this lol.

Timmie

I can explain that.
I know sombody in europe with a 92 trans am convertible. completely stock. and he has formula lights.
so I think that in some country's here, the trans am lights arent approved for on the road.
( he also doesn't have disck brakes on the rear )

okfoz

Timmy, I have seen those, it is just nice to confirm is all... Thanks

John

okfoz

Actually one of the "Rare" Things that I have found is in some cases there have been RPO's for first week & second week of production... Then they also had 40th thru 52nd week of production, which could make each car virtually unique... by using the RPO's Almost all of the cars that I did searches for were 1 of 1, the highest number I found was 1 of 3... I suspect that there are some bugs to work out in the program as I am with Drew on this one...

I would love to be able to search the database for individual rpo searches... So we could compile the number of L98 T-top cars for example...

From what I can tell, about 5% of the cars are missing...

John

okfoz

That would be Total CONVERTIBLES, includes base Firebird verts as well.. The total number of JY Firebird, Formula, TA and GTA coupes was 457 If you add the verts to the coupes you have a total of 511 JY cars...

Honestly that seems reasonable with the number of JY cars that I have seen for sale... I suspect the VAST majority of the JY cars were Base firebirds.

300hpse

iTrader: (2)

My '90 came up and the numbers actually seemed really accurate based on logically judging how many t/a packages there were and how many lb9s and overall how many cars were produced based on the common options like speakers and a/c.

Ill post it up if anyone is curious but my verdict is the 1990 info is quite accurate on birds.

JT

iTrader: (1)

I agree with John. The system is separating Convertibles and Hardtop/T-Tops - atleast for 1992. Therefore, that is 54 JY Firebirds (base models) and Trans AMs.

JT

iTrader: (1)

John, you might try this (which I don't think it is advertised):
http://compnine.com/rpocheck.php

You have to select a Year and Model, but you can search how many are in the database with that RPO.

Interestingly, even though none of the older Trans AMs come up in the VIN database, I can select 1985 and 1986 Trans AMs through the above link to find out how many came with RPO X.

For example, it is said that 1986 was the last year for the L69. Using the above link, it shows there was 22 Trans AM with the L69. Our technical articles here on the website state there was 26. So the figures look fairly decent.

Drew

iTrader: (58)

I have to admit I've lost interest in it already. At best it's flawed, and incomplete. At worst it gives legions of sellers ground to stand on when they claim there car is 1 of 1 when it's really not. Even if they were 1 of 1 it'd still be a fairly trivial fact for 99% of these cars.

Drew

iTrader: (58)

Yeah, but... If you ask how many 1987 2dr Camaros had L98 it says The White book shows 12,105, which makes a lot more sense.

Again it comes back to the database being incomplete. Production numbers based on an incomplete database are worthless.

It also says there were 495 89 RS Camaros with L98. Just another of many flaws.

JT

iTrader: (1)

Drew, I see your point. However, though I view it as being incomplete, it's better than nothing and it may be workable. I don't know if they are still getting VINs into the database for these cars or not?

As far as 1 of 1. I ran a 1992 TA Convertible that is currently on eBay and is similar to my own. Mine came up as 1 of 1, but the 1992 TA Convertible on eBay came back as 1 of 2. Running my GM truck, it's 1 of 2 and a Corvette in the family is 1 of 26. I think it was you who once said that many of these cars could be "rare" (as far as configuration) given all the options available and the combination. Of course we know rare does not mean desirable or valuable.

No doubt the database is incomplete. I'm not sure if they are still able to add VINs for these cars or not. Most of mine have been confined to specific Trans Ams. From my little time with it, the figures look fairly close to what has been stated or speculated.

okfoz

Here is what I found
According to the link JT gave me only 1990 is complete... The following is the number of cars in their database:

Camaro's
82 - 10811
83 - 8582
84 - 14630
85 - 11699
86 - 12852
87 - 9173
88 - 4705
89 - 329 V (VERT), 2446 C (Coupe)
90 - 2023 V, 32963 C - COMPLETE
91 - 8255 V, 89578 C
92 - 3465 V, 59850 C

Firebird
82 - 3317
83 - 3403
84 - 5931
85 - 5181
86 - 3412
87 - 5012
88 - 3175
89 - 1575
90 - 20533 - COMPLETE
91 - 1378 V, 47612 C
92 - 1843 V, 22334 C

Hope that helps... From the offset one person who did some searching did not find anything prior to 1991 for the TA's... Apparently it is there now.

John

energycontacts

iTrader: (1)

i guess mine is the rarest so far:

There are 1 1990 CAMARO RS 2 DR vehicles (0.003%) matching your exact options list. There are 1 (0.003%) with at least as many options.

Drew

iTrader: (58)

That's a really small fraction of total production. Some years there were over 250,000 Camaros built. When they only have a small percentage of the total production in their database, it's no wonder so many vins come back as 1 of 1.

okfoz

I do not think the rarity thing is working correctly... I would wait to see if they get the bugs worked out of that part... Like I mentioned before, there are some RPO's that are used for identifying cars early in production, then you add on top of that identical cars that are different colors, are they really that different.... of the 30 or so cars that I have plugged in, almost all of them except a very few were 1 of 1.

I did a curious query...
1992
204 CC1,L98,W66
44 WS4,52U
31 W66,52U
24 WS4,52U - Convertible
15 Y84,52U
11 1LE,C60,W66
2 1LE,CC1,LB9
2 WS4,52U,1LE
0 L98,CC1,Z28
0 ws6,L98,cc1,ws4

1991
636 L98,CC1,Z28 - (Interesting I can't believe more of them have not shown up)
408 CC1,L98,W66
205 CC1,L98,WS4
3 CC1,L98,W66,1LE
3 CC1,L98,Ws4,1LE

1990
1 L98,CC1,GU2,Z28
39 AQ9,W66
98 L98,CC1,WS4 cars in 1990

This will be a blast of information if they ever get the complete listing... BTW, it has "Beta" next to the link...

John

L695speed

Awesome tool, just wish it actually went back to the earlier cars so we can find a better breakdown on options. Like L69/T5/CC1 how many? Then add color to that. Would be great. I'm looking forward to the day that more VINs are added to the earlier years on there.

C-Titan

iTrader: (2)

I dont like how it says my car's an RS... Love how my car is 1 of 2 in the world with the selected option packages... ?? Sure why not... haha... I dig how you can instantly get a list of EVERYTHING that was originaly on your car...

The whole rarity thing made me miss my 84 L69 Z-28 though ...

Black_Knight

I've had three third gens, and currently own two. I've NEVER found RPO codes in any of my cars. The two VIN numbers I've got for my current cars do not show up in that VIN decoder.

okfoz

Someone suggested that it was from the Canadian registry information, at least the 1982-1989 portion... Anyone with a Canadain delivered car prior to 1990 what has your results been?