Ok, honestly I never thought about it really hard, but I always thought it strange that the Factory designation for Norwood was "N" but Van Nuys was "L". It threw me a little, where did the "L" for Van Nuys come from? Norwood makes complete sense to use an "N". As it turns out in many, if not most cases the Factory designation characters used strange letters, but sometimes they were quite logical. For example F was for Flint, but Flint also used H, Arlington was an R, Lansing could be a V, C, and some of the other factories used a number, therefore in some cases it made complete sense but other times it appears to be a completely random designation, I always thought the L was just a random Designation.

As it turned out Van Nuys was not always called the Van Nuys Plant. From 67-71 the Metal Trim Tag could identify Van Nuys as either "VN" or "LOS" (obviously for Los Angeles) From 1967-1971, at some point in the late 60's "VN" was no longer used and the tag would read just "LOS", then in the mid 70's that changed again and they went to a single letter or digit designation and it simply became "L".

So now I know why N = Norwood and L = Van Nuys (Los Angeles)...

I guess if I cared enough to actually think about it it would have made sense... oh well...

 

Cool...

 

One of my new learns today, thanks Professor....

 

So why was the 8th digit of the VIN a number "7" on the 1983 L69 equipped Z28's, and all the later years a letter designation?

 

It is hard to say... The Engine Designations for any given year seem to be pretty basic, they used the Letters from A thru Z except for I, O, Q, maybe a few others. But they also used the numbers 1 thru 9, but not 0 (Zero) from what I can tell. The Letter designations all seem to be only used once for a particular engine. However the numbers especially 7, 8, 9 etc they seemed to denote several different engines for a particular year.
It could be that there was no other letter available in 1987, so they used the number 7, and when G became available in 1984, they changed the L69 from the 7 to the G.

Interestingly G was not used for any engine in 1983 AFAICT. And 7 was not listed in the parts catalog VIN decoding either for 1983... So your guess is as good as mine. I think the HO was introduced mid year however...

 

I have always wondered about that. Mystery solved.........L=Van Nuys (derived from the prior Los Angeles designation). Seems so simple.

 

awesomeness!

 

Yeah, you're right....'83 was the first year for the L69 HO option and it didn't come out until mid-year. 7 may not be on the VIN decoding catalog, but it's on my VIN plate on the dash! Funny that Autozone even lists a VIN 7 for 1983 Camaros when I went for replacement parts years ago.