1985 convertible at Indy IAAI

[foxchassis]

Added it to the database.

https://www.iaai.com/Vehicles/VehicleDe ... owNumber=5

Auction Indianapolis Wednesday Dec-17 8:30 AM CST I-bid LIVE
Status: READY FOR SALE
Location: Indianapolis Branch
Item#: #TBD
Who Can Bid: Dealer, Dismantler, Exporter, Non-Auto Licensed Business, Other Licensed Business, Public, Rebuilder, Scrapper
Seller: WFYI Public Media
Data Last updated: Dec-10 1:26 PM CST

Stock# : 14238885
Sale Document : CLEAR(Indiana)
Loss: OTHER
Primary: MECHANICAL
Secondary: UNKNOWN
Key: Present
Start Code: WON'T START
Odometer: 8320
Odometer Status: NOT REQUIRED/EXEMPT
Fuel Type: Other
Engine:
Transmission: Unknown
Drive Line Type:
Vehicle: Automobile
VIN: 1MHBP79M6FF613492
VIN Status: OK
Body Style:
Vehicle Class: Non Luxury Sport
Series:
Manufactured in: UNITED STATES
Exterior Color: WHITE
Interior Color: BLUE
CD Player: N/A
Radio: PRESENT
Tape Deck: PRESENT

[jlovins82]

I bought this car the tag on the pass quarter says it #260. I thought they only made 257 convertibles in 85? Can anybody explain this?

[Kentennis]

At ASC they had a box with numbers in it. When a car came down the line they just reached in the box and grabbed a number. The number has no correlation to when it was built. They did not follow numerically.

[jlovins82]

So there no way to tell what number the car was built. The title states only 8200 actual miles on it. I carfaxed the vin and I never showed being registered at all until 2006?

[svo413]

I bought this car the tag on the pass quarter says it #260. I thought they only made 257 convertibles in 85? Can anybody explain this?

It's hard to say why it has a higher number than the expected number built. Yours makes 7 over the expected 257 number.

Two things to remember. Sandy told us on the later cars, factoryreplacement serial number tags got a much higher number. My guess is this was due to just picking a higher number than they planned on building for that year. They probably did not know the exact number of builds to cut off for the model year until they got close to the end.

Second, replacement tags can be still purchased with or without the number!

I have a list of cars and vin numbers. For 84-86 they seem to be fairly sequential. Given that they pulled from inventory by color needed, that puts the vins off a bit in sequence if they numbered the serial numbers as they went out the door. 85 Data is a bit spotty though. ASC ordered the cars from Ford in lots of 10 or so cars and the vins seem sequential for the MH vins.

This car seems to have been built about May and that does not put it near the end of the production year. There were more white cars built later by vin.

The wheel barrow of serial number tags was used later like in 88 from what Sandy said. It would make sense since there were making so many at that time.

After saying all that, I now see #256 is 1200 cars lower on the vin. I count 9 white cars built around that time.

[dahberg]

They did not start renumbering the 1985's from 1984. Just continued the numbers and then there was no significance in the sequencing beyond having number 1 or number 50 from 1984...

[svo413]

I did not mean to imply the serial numbers continued from 84 thru 86 but simply low serial numbers per year related to low VIN numbers of the same year.