Can someone explain this?

[bugedd]

Today I was looking at the body production number of the shell I have, somewhere in the 30k area, and decided to look at my driver. Then something didn't add up, so I pulled all tag numbers.
Body number 16755
Passenger side tag BAE 16889
Drivers side tag AN 51748
VIN tag AN5L 41434.

So am I seeing a body from the early 59 with a VIN tag from the late 60 year on it?

 

[CLEAH]

The numbers are typically all over the place, and the only two numbers the factory recorded were the car number (vin) and the BAE number (engine too). They pretty much never "match." A numbers matching car is one where the numbers on the car match the numbers on the Heritage certificate. Other than the vin, I don't think you can reliably date anything by the number. On my car, the vin and the BAE are one digit different, but that is very unusual to be that close. All the other numbers are very different. My car is numbers matching to the certificate.

 

[Gerard]

The numbers are typically all over the place, and the only two numbers the factory recorded were the car number (vin) and the BAE number (engine too). They pretty much never "match." A numbers matching car is one where the numbers on the car match the numbers on the Heritage certificate. Other than the vin, I don't think you can reliably date anything by the number. On my car, the vin and the BAE are one digit different, but that is very unusual to be that close. All the other numbers are very different. My car is numbers matching to the certificate.

They never match, but they are never that far apart either. Typically, they should be within 1000 digits. For example, one of my Bugeyes in in the low 42,000 range while the BAE and engine number are in the mid 41,000 range.

 

[bugedd]

Thats what I thought. I'm guessing my driver has had some interesting history

 

[smaceng]

My old sold BE had a chassis # of AN5L 30409
with an engine number per Heritage Certificate of 9C-U-H/30665 (long gone)
Body # of BAE/30592
The Thompson # stamped on the outside of the right footwell was 30441.
All relatively close, but never number matching.
Scott in CA