I made a major error. I believed the magazine.
Of course the order schedule wouldn't have the VIN's on them - VIN's were unknown until the Chevrolet side assigned them. So USCC just assumed there were no VIN's involved.
7N100001 is 09B NOR860
7N100013 is 05B NOR46
7N100031 is 09B NOR890
I'm not so sure about "built on a trim tag already Batch assigned for fall production". Some of the early cars have 09B, but not all. There are 05B tags (which fit when the cars were built) and 09B is over a month off from when that body # would have been built. NOR 8xx is mid August, not mid Sept. And that would have been a tag stamped 4 months and thousands of cars before it was needed.
It's probably the biggest anomaly #-wise I've seen. I can't explain the puzzle piece but I'm guessing it involved prepping the car for sale (removing the 110v lighting, etc).
Phil,
How far ahead did they stamp trim tags? I believe it was only when the car was on the schedule (to be built), i.e. a couple of days ahead.
I helped Jobin when #100001 first showed up - too bad I didn't ask him about the wiring cause the headliner was maybe original - the rest of the car sure wasn't!
126677N100013 MUST be a pilot car. I don't think (but I could be wrong. I often am!!) Chevrolet would have built a "production" car in May of 1966. During that time, Norwood was still building full size cars and Novas.
126677N100031 could possibly be the first "production" convertible, but we don't have too many cars before that in the db.
Pre-production cars were run down the line, mixed in with regular production. John or Phil could expand on how they pull that off, but mainly it involved leaving space on the line before / aft the car.
Remember the schedule was for 49 NOR cars. There were 2 convertibles in the first 10.
Anything before VIN 7N100050 would have been one of these pre-production cars.
Cars after the first 49 appear to have normal VINs, dates (08A), and body #'s, btw.
There are real early 68's that are stamped June, so the 68's were built to the same time schedule.