Alright Ladies, in response to the question of "How rare are our cars?" I mentioned the VIN...Lots of guys tried faking R/Ts in the last musclecar craze of the eighties. To save ourselves from being burned really bad I will post this. The next time you are looking at spending cash on a 440 R/T, and it turns out to be a 318 Frankenstien, you will thank me! I will post decoding fendertags later when the girlfriend isn't wanting my attention....




This is how the VIN breaks down:

If the first four characters are JS23 or JS29, you are in luck! The Chally Vin breaks down like this: J is the Chally line. The Second character is the body style: H is the "Highline" trim level, the garden variety Challenger and your Trans Am fall into this category. The "S" stands for the Special line, reserved for the R/T (Rallye from '72 on), and SE cars (a 318 SE would be a JS23, while a 318 coupe would be a JH23). "L" is an easy one to figure out, it stands for Low. This is an interesting subject, as the JL2 cars are the Deputy Coupe. Some of the '70 Deputies have the JL2, vin prefix, while some of the '71s have JS2...We will touch on the Deputies in a second, again. The last character denominates price, and pretty easy to figure out, 1 being the lowest, 9 being the highest. As redundant as it might seem to have, it dictates a lot about the car. The "convertible" designation isn't in the body style class, but in price, (JS27, JH27). The reason for this is because a Challenger R/T could be ordered, (JS2), but in three body styles, 2 door hardtop, 2 door Special Edition, and 2 door convertible. It would be excruciatingly confusing to designate three seperate body styles, so it is simple enough for Chrysler to dessiminate all that by price class. The Deputy Coupe is another oddball, because again, there have been JL21 and JH21 examples documented. The Challenger only has, "1", "3", "7", or "9" in this category.
The next character is the engine. Chrysler's alphabetical system is pretty explanatory, A-V. "A" being the 170 c.i. Slant Six (The 170, was 1970 only and 198 were 1970 and 1971-only engine options) up to "V" the 440 Six Barrel.
This is how the numbers break down...
A = 170 ci (I have only seen this in '70s)
B = 198 ci (1970-71 only)
C = 225 ci (1970-72 only)
G = 318 ci (All years)
H = 340 ci (1970-73 only)
J = 340 ci six pack (1970 only)
L = 360 ci (1974 only)
L = 383 ci (1970-71 only)
N = 383 ci High power (1970-71 only)
R = 426 ci Hemi (1970-71 only)
U = 440 ci (1970 only)
V = 440 ci six pack (1970-71 only)

The next character is the factory. Chrysler had I want to say close to five plant scattered around the country, (Hamtramck, L.A., Jersey, St. Louis, Canada). Some plants only built specifically one platform (Jersey only built C Bodies in the early seventies), St. Louis built B and A(?) bodies, and so on.
Our Challengers were built in two places: Hamtramck, and L.A. No E bodies were built in St. Louis in 70-71. No Hemis, Sixpacks or ragtops were ever constructed at the Van Nuys plant. I don't recall ever seeing any sunroof cars out of LA. The Sunroof cars were subcontracted at an offsite location by ASC, similar to how the Superbirds were finished by Creative...

After the factory code, is the year. Implemented in 1968-69, this lasted until the early eighties 17-digit vin mandate by the government. In 1980, Ma Mopar used letter characters here...Miradaman, help me out here!

After the year code, is a one, two, or three depending on the time of manufacture. That is the sequence number. The Phoenican Hemi Cuda Convert reads as a BS27R1B3XXXXX.

The other five digits are the sequence number as well. This number doesn't indicate the amount of a certian model produced, or even the sequence of the car assembled! You see, the VINs of the cars were assigned to them when they were nothing but stacks of bulk sheet steel. The number crunchers in the glass offices at Chrysler