First 1970 Ebody Hemi Cuda - $3,200,000
Am I missing something ? The VIN decodes out to be correct for this car but this looks like the 3rd car off the line as 100001 is the first and 100002 would be the second....maybe the first 2 were never released to the public and were executive cars.....but they are still out there , no?
Those may not have been Hemi cars...
The last 6 digits are individual to the specific car... It's the ones before that is what tells what engine size it came with...
For all we know, 100001 and 100002 may have been slant 6, 318, 340, 383, 440....
also, they don't build them in the order of the last 6 digits in the VIN... They are build according to the SEQUENCE NUMBER which is listed on the build sheet.... Sequence numbers go by around 100 increments, then they can make some "fill-ins" if they have to shuffle some orders around to prevent having to resequence everything after for one change...
If you go to an assembly plant, very rarely will you see consecutive VIN numbers coming down the line back-to-back...
When you first order the car, it gets assigned a Vehicle Order Number (VON)...
Then it gets assigned the VIN number after the order goes through edit and passes edit... That's where they check all of the sales codes and verify there are no conflicts or mistakes...
Then the order "floats" for 3-4 weeks until the scheduler at the assembly plant schedules it for production... They usually schedule it 1-2 weeks before it's built... they have to make sure that they have the parts to build all of the options required for that car... The last thing they want is to have the car on the line and run out of parts for it and have to stop the line... When the line stops, there are manager's butts on the line if it's not back running soon...
Then when the scheduler assigns a build date, it will get the SEQUENCE NUMBER... It is this sequence number that determines it's position on the assembly line... These numbers are consecutive according to the increment...
It has happened that two consecutive VIN cars get built back to back, but it is a rare occasion...
Don't forget that engineering pulls quite a few of the first built cars to run their verification testing on the production tooling... They get the first ones off the line and then the rest are put on hold for about 1 month until the production verification testing is complete and everything passes... They can't ship the cars until they have been verified and approved in case there was a problem discovered so they don't have to recall them later...