The 1974 Limited Editions, New info, more questions Options

[davep]

Recently Jell Bowlsby and I were contacted about a potential LE car. In my 20 years of research I never thought it was possible for such a late car to be an LE. However, the owner has the COA, the window sticker and a bill of sale. Well, you can't ask for more documentation than that. As far as I'm concerned the window sticker is the definitive proof I want to see. On the other hand, this car raises even more problems. Previous knowledge was that the run of LE's was done in February, March and early April. Even 15 years ago I knew that the run of, supposedly 1000, LE cars spanned more than 1000 VIN's and in fact spanned at least 2000 VIN's. Until recently I had not found non-LE cars within the then-known range, and thus supposed that the extra cars within the range were for non North American markets. Then a few cars started to show up that were definitely not LE's within the range, but most of them are indeed late in the range. These cars were usually 1.8 engines. The general range of LE production was from 14348 to 16760. I believe that 14348 is very close to the beginning since car 14345 is a 1.8 as are many cars immediately preceding it. This puts the begining of production at about the seventh week of 1974, thus in mid February. I have almost half of the known LE's built in February according to the decal on the drivers door post, and with chassis #'s indicating a Friday in week 9 of 1974.

Okay, enough of the preamble, what is so special about the recent find? The VIN is 4742921331, and remember that the final VIN of 1974 Model Year is 4742921370.

Well then, this would mean that LE production went up to the end of 1974 MY production, or almost so. This car has a decal showing 07/74, July production! And it has a chassis number showing 28th week of the year. It also has the sail panel vinyl not seen on any other LE. This adds about 4600 VIN's to a range that was only 2412 long. I did not mind the incremental widening of the range as new cars were discovered outside of the initial range I had found, that was to be expected. However, after all these years of research we find one that can be verified that far out of the range IS mindboggling.

What does this mean? For starters, it may be a rather unique car. Let us suppose that a dealer chose to order that particular color combo on an otherwise similarly equipped model late in the model year. I doubt the factory would turn it down. Note the sail vinyl though. The holes for the trim were most likely drilled before painting. Thus, so late in the year and with a new chassis coming up very shortly there were probably a very limited selection of 1974 MY bodies available from which to choose. You cannot very well choose to do much but to add the vinyl and add the trim to fill the holes.

What I would ask of our members is to send me VIN, chassis, paint code, date code and engine type (2.0 or 1.8) for all cars from 4742914000 on up. Jeff Bowlsby's LE Registry web page is here:

http://members.rennlist.com/914_canam/914CanAmRegistry.htm

If your car is already listed, please double-check the info. Accuracy is everything.
If you think you may have an unlisted LE, please contact Jeff or myself.
If you have a car that is definitely not an LE, please send me the particulars.

This is a bit of a new adventure, and I'm trying to hang on to the tail of this twister.
A picture of the car that confounds us:

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/drunk.gif)