For discussion, my 10D Los car is 505849 partial VIN and my trim tag is 132383 so while the VIN's are only 436 apart, the trim tags are 6,710 apart . It just seems odd to me that there is that wide a difference in VIN and trim tag numbers for the same week of 10D. Just something to think about... maybe Mark or Kurt can help explain those spreads?
For '69 Norwood and Van Nuys were on the same order entry system. Since Norwood built 87% of production there are going to be large gaps between VN body numbers. For every Camaro VN built NOR built 7.
The number on the body tag is the order confirmation number. It is unrelated to the VIN and was not a factor in production scheduling. A group of orders placed by a dealer may not have all been confirmed at the same time in sequence; they could be thousands apart. But they may have been built at the same time to facilitate shipping.
Many orders were cancelled; the highest body number through July '69 is in the 377,xxx range but by then only approximately 201,000 Camaros had been built. The first body number was probably 100001.
To demonstrate I checked our '69 VN db. There are 18 pair of consecutive VINs; the body number gaps are as follows: 3,179 2,055 2,406 24,329 1,872 1,027 355 3,706 369 38,361 55,372 7,468 1,114 11,897 12,589 3,839 8,503 5,508. There are also 3 consecutive VINs; gaps are 12,971 10,999 23,970. Worthy of note: in 10 of the 18 examples the higher body number was built prior to the lower one.
There were several factors involved in scheduling production: color, equipment, dealer status, ship to location, stock/customer/fleet order. Which was first among equals at a point in time is impossible to determine.