Would anyone happen to know the range of Fisher body numbers
for Lansing for the 79 model year?
I am trying to figure out if my 79 H/O is a early or late build.
Build date is 05C and body number is 600469.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Doug

 

I don't think anyone has ever been able to decode body numbers from the cowl tag. What's the car's VIN?

Your build date tells you that it's not at all an early build. 05C is third week of May 1979. With production beginning in the fall of the previous year, that's a late build. Two months later, production would begin to move to the 1980 models.

 

may and prior is considered early in the GTO world, and has been for ever as long as i can remember

 

Somewhere I read that body numbers started at 400001 for Lansing in 79.
I would presume that possibly would for all gbodys built.
That would explain a late build if it was May of 79 with a
body number of 600468.
I have one service record that was with the car when I bought it that states
it had a Jan 79 delivery date.
If the build date on cowl tag is really May of 78 then body numbers would have had to start at a higher sequence. Such as 600001. Which would make it a very early build(for the body), but that would almost be to early for a Jan 79 delivery date. Although it had to go all the way to California.
The VIN is 3k47r9m558xxx.

 

I don't think so. You're talking about the starting serial number in the VIN, which doesn't have anything to do with the body unit number on the cowl tag. I don't have a '79 service manual, but I do have a '78, and the starting VIN at the Lansing plant was the same that year as well, 400001. This is the starting number of the last six VIN digits.

Your VIN last six are 558xxx. If the VINs started wth 400001, then your car is number 158,000+ to come off the Lansing line that year, which is another indication, along with the May 1979 build date on the cowl, that your car was built late in the model year.

 

So, with it having a build date a couple of monthes prior to change over
to 80 models and with the numbers of H/O's built.
What are the chances it could be one of the last built?
Does anyone happen to know the range of VIN# from Lansing.
Were Calais built at other plants as well?

 

Yes other plants built cutlass's but only Lansing built Hurst versions. Or M in the VIN.

Oldsmobile had terrible record keeping. They can tell you how many of certain units were built, but when it comes to "saturation numbers" or per options or colors forget about it. The H/O in your case has a breakout for white or black

Pat

 

I don't think there is any way to determine this.

This would be a great thing to know for any model year for any plant, but I've never seen this kind of information. I doubt it exists.


As Pat has noted, Olds was famous for poor record-keeping. But you also have to remember the issue here. Olds was in the business of selling new cars, not keeping records so that people 40 or 50 or 60 years later could look up how many of this or that were built and with what options and what colors. Other than to old car collectors, there would have been little use for this kind of information, certainly not back in the day.