andyolds88

Hello all, I'm currently working on my recently purchased '61 Dynamic to get it into a roadworthy condition. According to the previous owner he imported the car to the UK from Crockett, Texas around 1998/99.
Was working inside the car tonight and decided to have search between the front seat cushion and backrest and found an old bill from a Robeson motor company, Bryan, Texas. It's dated 31/12/75, and is for $2.00!
The Olds original USA license no. is listed on the bill which I think reads either H1EY845E, HIEY845E, N1EY845E OR NIEY845E.
This is the only history I have of the car from when it was in the US, just thought it would be nice to share it with you all, maybe someone local remembers the Robeson motor co. or even the car itself? Be very interested to hear your views!
Here's a current photo of the old gal.

D. Yaros

H1EY845E

Do not know what this is, but it is doubtful it is a U.S. license plate number. It has way too many digits.

MDchanic

Regardless, in the US (aside from California, back in the old days), the license plate number stays with the owner, not the car, so it's unlikely to tell you anything about the vehicle.

- Eric

andyolds88

Ah, ok thanks for the info. If I find anything else interesting I'll post it here.
If nothing else at least I now have some service history!

jaunty75

Post a scan or close-up photo of this so we can all see it and maybe help you decipher it.

oldcutlass

In Texas the plate stayed with the car.

andyolds88

Ok thanks, here it is. The license no. is in the third box along about a third of the way down the page, the 'E' at the end is actually written in the 4th box along which states the mileage. Hope this helps!

jaunty75

Thanks. The photo was light, so I went ahead and sharpened the contrast, which makes the numbers much easier to read.

I can see the first box that says "MAKE", and "61 Olds" is written there. The last box says "MILEAGE," I believe, and you're right, it looks like the first character in that box, an "E", is a spillover from the previous box. The mileage looks to be 99973. Is this mileage consistent with what the car has now?

What are the labels for the middle two boxes? I can't make them out in the image. It looks like whoever filled out the form didn't worry about making sure the appropriate information stayed inside the borders of each box.

As I read it, that long string of characters that starts to the right of "61 Olds" is 618709099NEY865E.

I'm guessing the NEY865E is the car's license plate number. Seven-character license plate numbers were and are not uncommon.

I don't know what the 618709099 would be. It would help to know what the label is on that second box.


I think I disagree with you on the date. Yes, it looks like 31 12 75, but you're reading this the way a Britisher would. In the U.S., we commonly put dates as month/day/year, not day/month/year. I'm not sure that's a "1" next to the 3, anyway. It could be just a smudge. I think the date is actually 3/1/75, or March 1, 1975, not that it really matters that much.


But I would like to know what the labels are on those two middle boxes.


Thanks again for posting this. It's always fun to try to decipher old documents!

D. Yaros

Hard to read in the pic. Would be nice to have a blowup. Have no idea what the "E" is, but NEY-865 looks like a license plate number to me.

Here is a 1975 TX license plate -

jaunty75

I think you're right. I think that "E" just before the mileage is not part of the previous box. It's written like the mileage digits in that it goes below the line. The license plate characters (at least the last three of them) all stay in the box. Not sure what the E means, unless it's "Estimate," but then why would the mileage have to be estimated if it's right there to all five digits?


I'm curious what this purchase was for, anyway. $2.00? I'm not sure what that word is at the bottom. Map? Snap? If you're just selling a guy a map, why do you write down the car's mileage, license plate number, etc, anyway?

andyolds88

No problem at all, and thanks to you for all your efforts!

The second box along is labelled 'serial number' and quotes the VIN plate(which is actually 612T09099) and the second box says 'License number', which I'm now wondering is actually MEY865? I agree with what you say (in a later post) about the 'E' being purposely written in front of the mileage but have no idea what it's there for.
The current Mileage reads in the 43,000's so if it was 99973 (or maybe 39973?) in '75 it's feasible that it's now 143,000 as it has spent at least the last 12 years off the road.

Thanks again for your interest, hopefully between us all we'll get to the bottom of it!

andyolds88

Thanks for that, that seems to make more sense now having seen your example. Sorry I haven't managed to find a way of blowing up the scan, I'm not too hot on stuff like that but I'll keep trying, probably end up getting one of the kids to do it lol!
Thanks everyone for your input.

jaunty75

I think you actually have it and don't realize it!

In looking at the receipt even more closely, I think the mileage IS actually 39973, not 99973, and the "E" ahead of it stands for "Exceeds" meaning that the mileage exceeds the mechanical capacity of the odometer. I've seen this same notation on car titles when I've titled an old car whose mileage was above 100,000 but which had only a 5-digit odometer. In those cases, as the person at the motor vehicle bureau told me, the E stands for "Exceeds Mechanical Limits".

So I'm guessing that in 1975, when this receipt was written, your car already had 139,973 miles on it. Since then, about 3,000 more have been added. It's obviously not been driven much in the last 38 years.


I think you're right about this, too, as that was the format of Oldsmobile VIN's back then. It decodes this way:

61 = year (1961)
2 = series (Dynamic 88). This digit corresponds to the second digit of the series number. For the full-size cars, 3200 series was Dynamic 88, 3500 series was Super 88, and 3800 series was Ninety-Eight.
T = assembly plant (Arlington, Texas)


The remainder of the digits are just a sequential number at the Arlington plant, and the starting number was 01001. Your car's number of 09099 suggests a car built early in the model year as 09099 - 01001 = 08098 or the 8098th Oldsmobile built at that plant that year.

Post a photo of the body cowl tag, which is probably mounted on the driver's side of the firewall under the hood. There will be code numbers and such on there that will give the month and week the car was built, paint color scheme, and possibly some of the options that were on it when it left the factory. It would be interesting to see if the date built code is consistent with an early-in-the-model-year build.

I still think it's very interesting that whoever filled out this receipt put all of this info about the car on it even though they were only selling a $2 item. It's also interesting how bad his handwriting was. The VIN may start out 612T, but it sure looks like he wrote 6187!


You might find wildaboutcars.com a valuable resource. It's free to join, and the full 1961 Olds factory service manual is there for viewing online. That's where I found this VIN decoding info.

andyolds88

Thanks so much for taking the time to check these things out.
Unfortunately I've had other commitments tonight so didn't get chance to get a photo of the body tag but will do it tomorrow night and post it.
I've had a look at how much the $2.00 would be worth in todays money and was surprised to find it only equated to around $9.00, so it was obviously not a major purchase! It's a shame his handwriting isn't more clear, I can't figure out what the $2.00 charge was for either.
Thanks also for letting me know about the wildaboutcars site, I'm off to check it out right now! Appreciate your help.

copper128

I'd say that tag # was MEY865.

andyolds88

Ok, here's the body cowl tag for your perusal.
Thanks again for the heads up on the wildaboutcars site, it's great to have access to the factory service manual, I've learnt a lot from that already! I noticed it was donated to the site by D. Yaros who posted earlier in this thread so many thanks to him for that!

jaunty75

The 06C translates to the third week of June. I'm guessing that's June 1960 as that would be consistent with the low VIN. This has to be one of the first Oldsmobiles built for the 1961 model year.

andyolds88

Wow that's really interesting. You've certainly been doing your homework!
Pretty cool to know it's an early model, although I've heard from a quality point of view that the early cars were not usually the best, as they ironed out the problems and learned to build the cars better as time progressed. I guess though if it's lasted 52 years then it can't be that bad lol!

jaunty75

I would worry about this if the car was the third or fifth or 10th one built that year. But even though it's an early model year build, it's still the 8000th Oldsmobile to come off that assembly line that year. I would think that, by the 8000th car, they would have ironed out any problems. I would hope they would have done that by the 10th or 20th car.

Actually, the old adage back in the day was to avoid a Monday or Friday-built car because Monday cars were built by workers who were still getting over their hangovers from the weekend just ended, and Friday cars were built by workers who weren't paying attention because they were looking forward to the upcoming weekend.

Of course, there was no way to tell what day of the week your car was assembled or any way to request one that was made in the middle of the week. Rather, it was more of an after-the-fact thing. People whose new cars had rattles or squeaks or poorly fitting doors or hoods or had little things go wrong early on in the car's life would just say "I must have gotten a Monday car."

andyolds88

Yes, that 'Monday/Friday car' logic is very common here in the UK too!
Going slightly off track now but it reminded me of a tale I read once of a guy who had an annoying rattle in his new car. He took it back to the dealer a couple of times but they couldn't find what was wrong with it. In the end he couldn't put up with it any longer so he took the car back again and insisted that they find out the problem. In the end they stripped out the whole dashboard and found a large bolt floating around loose inside. There was a small note tied to the bolt that read 'Sorry, it was my last day'!

jaunty75

That's a mean thing to do to a new car buyer no matter how cute it seems after the fact. I hope the dealer, when that was found, apologized profusely to the owner and compensated him for his inconvenience and annoyance in some way. New cars are not supposed to be booby-trapped, no matter how harmless it might be. Then I hope the dealer informed the manufacturer of the incident, and the manufacturer tracked down the idiot who did it and docked his pension.

As I say, it may seem funny now, but if it were my car, I would not have been the least bit amused.

MDchanic

Urban myth. I've heard several versions from several countries.

- Eric

andyolds88

I should have pointed out that the smiley face was allegegedly drawn on the note (if this actually even happened) and I was trying to depict this. I would never condone a prank like this and ironically I have been subject to a prankster myself sometime in the last couple of days. I went out this morning to work on my Olds to find someone has pinched one of the wheel nuts!

MDchanic

Prob'ly some squirrel buried it.

- Eric

NAS Backyard

I didn't realize how well silver works on the 61. Is it an auto transmission with the 394 2 barrel?

andyolds88

Yes, it's got a slight blue tinge to it too although it's classed as 'Grey' on the log book!
And you're correct, 394 2 barrel with slim jim trans.