View single post by Tom Bradley
 Posted: 07-27-2021 03:28 am
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Tom Bradley

 

Joined: 07-15-2013
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Jh092 wrote:
Does anyone know how they numbered the cars at the end of 1974?

Probably hurriedly and chaotically. One problem was that the JH was Jensen's attempt to go from being a low volume producer to high volume manufacturing, which apparently was not going smoothly. Second was trying to "make" as many officially 74 models as possible before the 1975 US catalytic converter requirement kicked in.

My guess is that different people were stamping out the VIN plates and had different ideas about what to use as the official build date. I have read that some 74's had 1975 dates printed, which I think might be a problem if one was trying to get the car newly registered in CA: 74's don't need to get smog tested, but 75's do. If the person inspecting the car at the DMV is a stickler, they could require it to be registered as a 75.