[1972elcaminomartin]

According to my VIN tag,last six numbers are 500820,would that be saying that mine was the 500820th built? How many elkys were built in 72 ??

 

[87next2last1]

Drop the 5 ! # 00820

See this link !
http://www.chevelles.com/elcamino/ec_total.htm

 

[396guy]

Ditto. 1972 Chevelles began with sequence number 500001 at all plants.
http://chevellestuff.net/1972/vin.htm

 

[BAS-Sr]

Just doing some decoding on my '72 and noticed this.

That's number 820 out of ~196k cars built in Baltimore, basically if you look at the ChevellesStuff web page for Baltimore monthly production numbers, that car probably was built on the 1st (or maybe 2nd) day of production in '71.

Mine was built the first week of October, probably on Monday the 4th. Based on what I read that might be true as the plants did not synchronize how they used the trim tag to report the car build date. Some started on the 1st (i.e. Oct 1st was a Friday might be the 10A) and some started the first "full" week of the month, therefore 10A could be the week of Oct 4th through the 8th or 10A could be Friday Oct 1st. Since I have seen some examples with 10A in it, I would tend to say that Baltimore used the first FULL week as the A week.

 

[396guy]

Just doing some decoding on my '72 and noticed this.

That's number 820 out of ~196k cars built in Baltimore, basically if you look at the ChevellesStuff web page for Baltimore monthly production numbers, that car probably was built on the 1st (or maybe 2nd) day of production in '71.

Mine was built the first week of October, probably on Monday the 4th. Based on what I read that might be true as the plants did not synchronize how they used the trim tag to report the car build date. Some started on the 1st (i.e. Oct 1st was a Friday might be the 10A) and some started the first "full" week of the month, therefore 10A could be the week of Oct 4th through the 8th or 10A could be Friday Oct 1st. Since I have seen some examples with 10A in it, I would tend to say that Baltimore used the first FULL week as the A week.

The Production Numbers by Individual Plant table are figures published/reported long ago. While I've found some trim tag body dates and known VINs that don't fall neatly into the range for a given month, having a 10A body date should be a much, mich higher VIN than 500820 considering there were 5,249 Chevelles supposedly assembled at Baltimore in August. By the numbers an October car should be in the 522854-540436 range. I'd be very interested in seeing a photo of the trim tag and VIN to keep as reference - not necessarily for publication. Email me offline at [email protected] if you could.

I've tried 7 ways from Sunday to compile some kind of possiility list for plants from 64-72 to corresponds trim tag month weeks with dates of that month/year calendar and it just doesn't work. As you noted would 10A be the first workday of the month (Friday) or the last week of September (Sept 27 to Oct 1)? I could often get one or two months to be in compliance of a given year then one runs into those pesky E weeks of months that only certain plants seemed to use. I have quite a list of 66 & 67 trim tags and keep a database on the VIN vs. trim tag date and using 1967 as an example, KC and Fremont have E weeks in August of 1966; Atlanta, Baltimore, and Fremont (again) have E weeks in September of 1966; Fremont (yet again) has an E week in October of 1966). Why would only 1, 2, and sometimes 3 plants have an E week when others do not? How could Fremont have 3 E weeks in successive months?

Bottom line, I gave up trying to work up any logical matrix and just report "A,B.C,D,E" week like everyone else.:dontknow:

 

[BAS-Sr]

Dale, sorry! I was not clear and mixed some comments about Martin's '72 with mine.

Martin's '72 being sequence 820 would probably have been built the 1st production day of the year (i.e. August 1st, or maybe the 2nd).

My car is 23841, thus fits into the 10A, first week of October.

Sorry for not being clearer in my comments.

You are right though about the actual numbers being "balanced" across the months/weeks/days of the production year. Do we know anything about the '72 production year? Any time when the line stopped producing cars for a reason? Probably show in the numbers though.

Bruce

 

[396guy]

I don't really know specific dates production started or ended for the 1972 model year. I'm guess it'd be like other years in general though that plants would shut down for model year changeover at different times so there would not be a 2-week or so timeframe when nobody was building cars.

Latest 1971 buildsheet I have is July 8, 1971 from Baltimore, sequence #238505 of 249596 reportedly built there.

Earliest I have for 1972 is August 31, 1971 from Van Nuys, sequence #5004066.