early production?

[PaxtonPwr]

I am under the impression challenger production was started in August 69. Is the vin in numbered production also? Just wondering where my challenger sits in production line.

[AARTA340]

Just noticed yours is a Hamtramck car, mine is an LA car, so the info below on my car  is not to relevant.

Your SPD is 822 and kinda aligns with the later of the month finish time.

Do you have the fender tag? The SPD is an anticipated build date. Your car rolled of the line in August of 69, and with the number I guestimate it at the end of the month. I have an RT with a spd of 802 and a door tag of a September date of 9-69 when it rolled off the line. It is a low vin of 101027. I have found out by talking with others, that it was do to the lack of parts to assemble the car as ordered. Hope this helps.

[PaxtonPwr]

Yes here is tag

[AARTA340]

Yes here is tag

I seen your other post and picture after I asked. From what I have researched, the cars did not roll off in order of the vins, the vins were assigned as they were ordered, but did not always get built on the Scheduled Production Date, or SPD. As in my car, it was highly optioned and parts ere still being made, hence the late date of the door vin in comparison to the SPD. Hope this helps a little.

[RzeroB]

I am under the impression challenger production was started in August 69. Is the vin in numbered production also? Just wondering where my challenger sits in production line.

As Grant said, it's almost impossible to tell exactly when your car rolled off the line. When the factory received orders from the dealerships, they generated a number of record items to include creating a VIN and assigning it to that car. Your Challenger was the 6,239th order to be processed and assigned a VIN at the Hamtramck plant for the 1970 model year. In another post I see you included a copy of your fender tag and on it I can see an SPD of 822. So as Grant said, based on parts that the factory planned to have available for building your car, they scheduled it for production on August 22nd, but ... (there's always a "but" when it comes to this topic) just because they scheduled it for that day doesn't necessarily mean that it actually rolled off the line that day. With all of the variables involved in mass producing a complex item like a car, all sorts of things could have happened that would have resulted in your car actually being built on a day other than August 22nd.

Grant's RT that he mentioned is an interesting example - even though his VIN is lower than yours which means the factory received the order and assigned the VIN before they did yours, it wasn't scheduled for production until September which is after yours. There must have been something about Grant's car, an option maybe, that the factory didn't expect to have on hand and thus had to push the scheduled production date out to a later time (September) when they expected to have all of the parts necessary to build it.

[RzeroB]

Ooops. See now that Grant's car and yours were not built at the same plant. However, the same basic theory of how they assigned VINs and then actually built the cars applies regardless.

[AARTA340]

Tom is right on target. My car was a Dealer Promo car, and came with just about every option available. It came with Speed Control (that is what Mopar called it) Power windows, A/C, 6 Way driver seat, Luggage rack, SE Package, hence RT/SE, time delay off for the headlights, rally gauges, rear window defroster, AM/FM radio 5 speaker system, and a couple others that I probably missed. It did not come with a rear spoiler/wing as it had the luggage rack. Sunroof was not possible with the SE package. And not all the parts were not available at the beginning of production, so it was delayed until the vendors were able to supply them for production.

[PaxtonPwr]

Fender tag

[AARTA340]

Going from memory, LA put out about 300+/- cars a day, and Hamtramck was able to roll off in excess of 1000 cars a day.These figures were after the bugs were worked out and the line running at optimal conditions. So with that in mind, with a low number of 106239, I guesstimate a mid to late month production. There is no way for sure, but the door tag is the most accurate time table to this point.

Lots of information at the site below.

http://www.hamtramck-historical.com/index.shtml