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DavidG · 02-13-2015, 06:48 AM

If your VIN is original and has not been altered over the years, it will inform you when your engine, but not your car itself, was manufactured. From that date you can safely assume that your car was not built on or before that date. The specific information as to how much time passed between the engine manufacture date and when that engine went into the chassis of your coupe no longer exists. In other words, the best you can do is to determine the "not before" date. Similarly, there is no surviving record of when a particular body was manufactured so the body number is only a general indicator of the "not before" date. (All of the deluxe coupe bodies were built by Murray and were shipped to the various Ford assembly plants so there was an independently varying lag between the date of the body's manufacture and when it was placed on a chassis in an assembly plant.)

The "divide by 12" idea is imperfect because the magnitude of production of vehicles varies considerably over the period of a model year, with way more than half of the production occurring in the first half of that year compared to the last half of that year. (In the case of U.S. built '32s, that year consisted of only eight and a half months and for only 10 months for the '33 model year.)

As there were a number of running changes made to the '32 deluxe coupe bodies (and chassis), the absence or presence of the revised components is another indicator of a car's "not before" date. These include the sun visors, the glove box, and the number of screws in the rear window garnish moulding.

So, as to August, 1932 in the case of your coupe, it is a "guesstimate" at best. It cannot be documented with surviving archival data.

02-13-2015, 06:48 AM	#5
DavidG Senior Member Join Date: May 2010 Location: southeastern Michigan Posts: 10,670	Re: 1932 ford vin # question If your VIN is original and has not been altered over the years, it will inform you when your engine, but not your car itself, was manufactured. From that date you can safely assume that your car was not built on or before that date. The specific information as to how much time passed between the engine manufacture date and when that engine went into the chassis of your coupe no longer exists. In other words, the best you can do is to determine the "not before" date. Similarly, there is no surviving record of when a particular body was manufactured so the body number is only a general indicator of the "not before" date. (All of the deluxe coupe bodies were built by Murray and were shipped to the various Ford assembly plants so there was an independently varying lag between the date of the body's manufacture and when it was placed on a chassis in an assembly plant.) The "divide by 12" idea is imperfect because the magnitude of production of vehicles varies considerably over the period of a model year, with way more than half of the production occurring in the first half of that year compared to the last half of that year. (In the case of U.S. built '32s, that year consisted of only eight and a half months and for only 10 months for the '33 model year.) As there were a number of running changes made to the '32 deluxe coupe bodies (and chassis), the absence or presence of the revised components is another indicator of a car's "not before" date. These include the sun visors, the glove box, and the number of screws in the rear window garnish moulding. So, as to August, 1932 in the case of your coupe, it is a "guesstimate" at best. It cannot be documented with surviving archival data.