Body Tag Assembly Date

Q: Body Tag Assembly Date

The body tag on my car is missing and I’m wondering what the assembly date would have been. Can any of the dates shown on the PHS documentation be coorelated to the assembly date? Was it a random generated number?

A: There are companies that reproduce the firewall Fisher Body Trim Tag. As for the Build Date Code on this tag, it was unique to the ‘shell’ of the vehicle and would not appear on the Billing History. The only other place this would appear is on the original Warranty Protec-to-Plate. Generally, the Body Build Date was about a week before the Billing History Invoice Date. Sometimes this varied but usually only on special order vehicles (RAII, Show Cars, etc). The difference being that the Body Tag Date was when the Body was sequenced for build by Fisher Body. The Invoice Date was when it actually was ‘cleared’ to leave Final Assy and Certification (just prior to shipping). So, from start to finish, it took about a week or so to build the complete car. If you send me your VIN, I can check it against the Registry Files and probably come up with a pretty close Body Build Date Code based on other VINs close to your’s.

A: Actually, the Fisher Body Unit Number was not randomly assigned. It was generated from ordering info and created by Sequencing (Broadcast). This number represented a specific build order within a batch for a specific time-frame. Factors that Fisher Body used when converting a dealer/customer order into a Body Unit Number included…. Exterior Colors, Models, Options, Special Orders. Just as it is today, cars were not necessarily built in the exact sequence they were ordered. In the world of mass produced vehicles, orders are processed based on production scheduling which in turn is established using many different variables. There was most certainly a process standard for assigning Body Unit Numbers however, I’m not aware of any factory documentation that survived. The Camaro Research Group has been trying to decipher this same issue for several years; What we do know is based primarily on common-practice and first-hand from former and current production plant employees.

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