NOR body number questions

[Jeff H]

Does anybody know for sure what the relationship is between the NOR body number and the car itself? Did dealers submit a large number of orders for cars and get a batch that was grouped together whether it was a Camaro or another model? I've been looking at the body numbers and some VIN's and the body numbers sure jump around quite a bit. I assume the body number was assigned as the orders came in since they would know the model, style(conv or coupe), engine(6 or 8), colors, interior, trim. This is bugging me and I can't sleep at night! /ubbthreads/images/icons/confused.gif

[copolocater]

You just about answered your own question.

[Jeff H]

So I might be able to sleep tonight. I guess my next question would be if dealers who ordered COPO's would have ordered several at a time? Was there a preference for certain dealers to get a COPO or several COPO's(obviously Yenko would be different from other dealers)? If a certain dealer already had ordered and received some COPO's, would they have to wait to get more COPO cars with another order until other dealers had a chance to receive some cars?

[William]

Having had access to a Chevy dealers records I've spent more time than contemplating this than is prudent.
The sequence of events was: the dealer order, acceptance of the dealer order by the factory, schedule & build of the unit. Three possible outcomes to the submission of a dealer order: immediately accepted & scheduled for production, not immediately accepted, rejected. A fairly basic coupe order is one that would likely be immediately accepted because all components were in continous production and certain to be available. From there several factors come into play. Hot selling models are generally allocated with certain dealers getting more than others. A dealer that was allocated 5 Z/28s per month would acknowledge & receive shipment long before a dealer with a lower or no allocation. Orders were delayed or rejected due to material shortages or engineering holds. I'm sure many people tried to order a JL8 Z/28 shortly after '69 introduction, not possible. Further along in the process I believe orders were grouped by body color and zone location for shipping purposes.

Here's an example. The dealer ordered 7 Camaros beteween 10-19-68 & 10-25-68. The order numbers were NDB083-NDB089. NDB083, 087 & 088 were Z/28s, the others were std production models. The std orders were accepted immediately and assigned BDY numbers of 185961, 187881, 187882, 195835. Many weeks passed before the Z/28 orders were accepted: NDB083 2nd week December, BDY # 226652, NDB087 early February, BDY # 262697, NDB088 early March, BDY # 286543. Here's the VINs for these cars, all ordered in the span of 1 week. NDB083 N584728, NDB084 N547404, NDB085 N545947, NDB086 N544300, NDB087 N603712, NDB088 N623253, NDB089 N559632. N623253 was ordered October 25 and took 24 weeks to build.

I've noticed an effort to correlate BDY #s with COPO production. Since most were ordered in groups it is no suprise that those numbers are often in sequence. But the VIN sequencing they seem to have is the result of an axle shortage revealed in an article about COPO production in MCR. Orders were held until axles were shipped. If the plant received 50 BE axles, 50 orders were released and built.

[Jeff H]

OK, so it sounds like there really isn't a whole lot of reasoning to the VIN and BDY #'s regardless of the dealer. I just keep hearing people talk about a "known" grouping of COPO's and finding several cars(at least 3) with very close VIN's(less than 31 apart) and built the same week yet it does not make for a "known" grouping. What actually constitutes a "known" grouping? If there were 50 BE axles that showed up at the same time and orders were released for those 50 COPO's, did those cars share BDY numbers sequentially or just close to each other? I see cars built in June with a VIN higher than a car built in May with a lower VIN, but the June car has a lower BDY number. /ubbthreads/images/icons/confused.gif I guess the mystery will continue unless we are fortunate enough to have Chevrolet records like the PHS documents. Thanks for the information William.

[Kurt S]

Jeff,
You're missing a key point here. Body # is order acceptance #. It has little to do with when the car is built (VIN sequence).
Those axles would go in the next 50 cars in the scheduler's queue. Since they would be built about the same time, the VINs would indicate that.

[Jeff H]

So when William said that due to the shortage of axles, "orders were held" means that the cars orders had already been accepted and they had a BDY number but were put aside until the axles became available? Then a group of cars would roll through together and get VIN's assigned very close to each other but it might not be the complete grouping done at the same time if they ran out of axles? Thanks for the input guys, I know I'm not the only one trying to make some sense of this data. /ubbthreads/images/icons/shocked.gif Or am I!

[Kurt S]

The VIN's may or may not be 'very' close, depends on how close the plant scheduled the cars. Could have orders from several dealers in that 'batch'.