Vanderbilt Cup Races

What is a VIN number?

A vehicle identification number (VIN) is like a car’s unique DNA sequence, a form of identification used by all modern motor vehicles. It contains data about the vehicle’s manufacture and country of origin including some model-specific details and the vehicle’s unique production serial number.

The standardized length for modern VINs is 17 digits. This format prevents any two vehicles produced within 30 years of each other from having the same VIN number. Some vintage or obscure vehicles don’t have a standard-length VIN while others have characters that don’t have a specific meaning or don’t follow a specific pattern.

Usually found on a lower corner of the windshield, these coded numbers can tell a person everything they need to know about the car, equipment and options.

Overview of the 17-Character Format
The VIN is divided into three main sections:

World Manufacturer Identifier – Characters 1-3.
Vehicle Descriptor Section – Characters 4-8.
Vehicle Identifier Section – Characters 9-17.

Full VIN description here.

The history of the VIN plate is a complicated one to say the least, but with a little historic research, let's see if we can simplify it a bit.

Manufacturers have always had some engine and/or chassis numbers, but with Ford mass-producing the Model T in numbers no other car manufacturer had previously done, it was becoming increasingly clear that automobiles would need some better identifying numbers to each individual car. State plate registrations and proof of ownership being the lead reasons for identification. Theft was also becoming a problem when an owner couldn't prove the car was theirs, so the need to start identifying individual automobiles was on the rise of the very quickly growing population of automobiles.

With the Model T, Henry Ford started with engine numbers to identify the cars with sequential numbers. Ford had it easy. His cars were sold as complete cars, body, chassis and all and one number was all that he thought was necessary, but things became a little 'messy' when you speak about higher-end luxury vehicles.. 

Duesenberg and many high-end luxury cars

Model T's were one thing, but high-end luxury cars of the day were sold and built differently.

From the early 1900's through to almost the 40's, Duesenbergs, Cadillacs, Packards and almost all cars in the luxury market were sold as a chassis only. The new owners would then decide what kind of body configuration they wanted. It could be a formal town car, coupe, convertible or anything in between put on the chassis they bought from the manufacturer. These coach builders, as they were called, were separate and apart from the engine and chassis manufacturers and specialized in building bodies only.

For instance, a perspective Duesenberg owner went to Duesenberg and had only two chassis options, a long or short wheelbase. Engine option was not a choice typically. After the new owner purchased his bare but fully operational chassis, he contacted any one of the multitude of coach builders in the U.S. and abroad like Bonham & Schwartz, Murphy, Weymann, Rollston and many others to have their car custom bodied to their exact specifications. Some even went so far as to purchase two bodies like a convertible coupe for the summer and then have a hardtop sedan body for the winter to swap on to the chassis.

This is when it started getting a bit complex. We now no longer had just an engine number, we had chassis and body numbers as well. But which number is best to identify a car?

Most of these high-end manufacturers were very proud of their engines with their technology and horsepower. Their feeling was an automobile's 'heart' was the engine and made an automobile an automobile.Their answer was to mostly focus on the engine number and the chassis number secondary since bodies can be changed. Modern car collectors are now scratching their collective heads reading this saying, "But don't engines get swapped too?" Yes, yes they do, but not as often as bodies back then.

Duesenbergs (and others) became a problem when the engine was changed since now their original identifying number no longer applied. It was difficult to track and document then and many modern collectors have an even harder time exactly identifying a car's history 100 years later with the chassis number being secondary.

Also, on another level, car collectors back then were not obsessively concerned with the term 'numbers-matching' as they are today when we want to make sure of a car's complete originality.

VIN's became globally standardized by 1981 when a single model had dozens of equipment and engine options in the same chassis and the 17 digit VIN could identify all these options as described above.

As a side note: along comes the Tucker in 1948. 

Preston Tucker thought it would be a great idea that if an owner brought his car for engine service, he could easily remove the original engine and provide a loaner, or sometimes permanent replacement during service so engine numbers were not as much of a focus. Tuckers were some of the first vehicles denoted by their body/chassis number only due to this, and even today, while we do note what engine number is in the car, the Tucker Automobile Club describe them by the Tucker chassis number, (I.E. #1001 through -#1050 of the 50 plus one prototype built).

The confusion of Duesenberg Model J #2448 J-399

When the Kroplick Collection acquired its 1930 Model J Murphy Sedan Convertible Berline, it had the usual 4-digit chassis number (#2448) and the usual 3-digit 'J-xxx' engine number (J-399).

Most Duesenberg owners, collectors and enthusiasts to this day still go by the old way of identifying Duesy's J-xxx engine number to determine which car it is. This posed a problem in our research into the car. J-399 was not the original engine for the car, it actually was J-440. To add to this confusion is that Duesenbergs did not have this number stamped on the engine block itself. The only visible engine number is on the removable bell housing of the engine. Other stamped numbers are on the internal crankshaft and connecting rods but cannot be seen until the engine is completely disassembled. All three of those components can be swapped with other parts making the engine number only identification more puzzling.

It is not uncommon to find conflicting information on Duesenbergs in published books and online information. The company has been defunct for 90 years and the record keeping back then is not as we know it today. There also was a fire at the factory at one point where many records were lost, so confusion this many years later is not surprising.  Duesenberg historian Randy Ema does possess every known remaining document from the Duesenberg factory and is one of the few people that can actually identify all the remaining Duesenbergs, but still, there is plenty of misinformation out there.

For instance, the website for the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum has a comprehensive list of all Duesenbergs, (Cords and Auburns as well) For chassis number #2448 (The Howard Kroplick car) there are three photos identifying the car. While the first two correctly identify the car, the third photo is incorrect as seen by this accompanying website screen grab photograph.

First, the car is listed as a 1934, it has the later skirted fenders and front and rear 'suicide doors'. It is clearly not the Kroplick Duesenberg. So how did this happen?

In the follow-up to this post, Howard will go into detail as to how this error and many others in reference to this car came about. Using owners private records, research and time with Randy Ema, he'll use #2448, J-399 as an example on how records can become confusing and incorrect over time.