VIN Conundrum, WTH? Options

[Artfrombama]

According to the engine code in my VIN my car is equipped with the 2L engine. No evidence that anything but a 1.8L engine was in the car.

4742910621

47 = Porsche 914 Type Designation
4 = Model Year 1974
29 = Engine Code / Chassis Variant (2.0L Fuel-Injected Flat-4)
10621 = Sequential Production Serial Number

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[Artfrombama]

Actually what started me looking at the vin was the car is listed on my insurance as a 2.0L

[wonkipop]

Actually what started me looking at the vin was the car is listed on my insurance as a 2.0L

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yeah - digit 4 and 5 assign in the following ways.

digit 4 is a 2. during the 60s VW was using a zero there. from somewhere around 65 or 67 - can't remember exactly when this particular full sequence of chassis numbering scheme came for all VW models but it was sometime in the mid sixties. as soon as 1970 came around the zero switched to a 2. this allowed the third digit in the vin which indicated the year of the decade to be used again. ie the difference between a 67 vin and a 77 vin is that while both would be a 7 as the third number the 4th number tells you which it is. 67 being **70 and 77 being **72.

don't ask me why they went from 0 to 2 without using a 1. mystery of german logic.

the 5 th number was assigned to each different model being made. up to 99,000 cars of a particular type per annum coming off the line this number would remain the same.
so for instance at the karmann plant the 914s used 9 as this number. beetle cabrios used 5, karmann ghias used 7.

if theoretically any of those cars exceeded 99,000 cars for the year that fifth digit would flip to the next number. the beetle cabs would go to 6 and the ghias would go to 8. i expect in the case of the 914 they never thought that would happen or maybe it would go a 0 or a 1 there. but anyway that is how the 5th digit worked. in any case the only models that really did have that 5th number change were the standard beetles and maybe some years of kombi buses. production numbers per annum were very high for the good old beetle. just like ford Ts. i cannot exactly remember but am pretty sure that in the case of the standard beetle they left enough of those 5th numbers available to get to a million cars in a production year which i am pretty sure it did a couple of times.

PS - there is no way to tell what engine the 914 was fitted with from reading the chassis (VIN) number. although in the case of 1974 914s there kind of is a way to tell it might be a fake 2.0. 1974 is unique in the years of all the 914s in that production of the small engine car (the 1.8 L jet) did not start at the start of the model year of production. L jet was delayed. not available for 914 engines until the start of november 1973. so production of 1974 914s from august to end of october 1973 were strictly 2.0s for ROW and USA and 1.8 twin carbs for ROW. the USA 1.8 L jet was not being made for those months. as a consequence VW had to do some catch up on production. it looks to me like, and this is based on the L jet research we all did that in terms of USA bound cars all they pumped off the line at karmann from nov 73 until about the end of jan 1974 was L jet cars. no 2.0 cars. i have also scanned the Vin records here on this website. those vin records also support this as highly probable.
so any 74 2.0 USA car with a production month of 11/73 to 01/74 ought to be looked at closely. its likely it was originally a 1.8 that got a owner upgrade along the way over the last 50 years.

i have definitely spotted one of those for sale on BAT. not a real 2.0 originally.
if that mattered to you. and in some cases it does as theoretically the 2.0s have a higher value.

this late commencement of 1.8 L jet production also explains the quite marked differences between early 74 2.0s and later 74 2.0s. production of the 2.0s was broken in half with a distinct three month gap between them. the later 2.0s incorporate a great number of changes. most of the changes occur during the 3 month production run of that first batch of 1.8 cars.