Suzie wrote:
> > This month's edition of Club Torque, the Club Triumph magazine included a
> > bunch of figures including home & export quantities & chassis numbers for
> > each mark.
> >
> > I'm rather confused as they quote the first set of Mk III chassis numbers
> > as being from FD1 - FD15306. Does that mean that I've spent all that money
> > on a non-existent car as Baby Blue is FD16410?
I have data that suggests that FD15302 was the first Spitfire
manufactured in calendar year (not model year) 1968. So perhaps all that
was meant by "first set" is those cars manufactured in calendar year 1967?
On Thu, 16 Mar 2000, Joe Curry noted:
> It might be noted that new year models started at even numbers (i.e.
> first 1970 model was FD75000) and the last of the year's models would
> have stopped at some point before that. So they are not totally
> inclusive.
But that didn't always happen. The Mk3 Spare Parts Catalog clearly notes
many, many items unique to the 1969 model year "Federal" Spitfire "Fitted
from Commission No. FDU31254"; note that this car was built well before
calendar year 1969, as the first calendar year 1969 Spitfire produced was
around FD39376.
> For the MkIV, production began in August 1970 with chassis number 3 and
> continued through 64996. Prefix could have been FH, FK or FL. Just
> like the Mk3, the MkIV year models started on major number sequences and
> left gaps between that and the preceeding year. Just like the Mk3, the
> Serial numbers 1 and 2 [as corrected by Joe in a later post] were
> not found.
No real idea here, but perhaps it is something akin to the situation with
the early TR2's. After several prototypes, TS1LO and TS2 were the first
two "off-tools" TR2s to be built 22 July 1953 (two days before yours
truly). But these cars were virtually hand-assembled vehicles, both sent
off to shows (#1 to Canada and #2 to Ireland). Could FH1 & 2 (and/or FK
or FL as Joe notes) have been show cars as well? Anyone?
--Andy
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* 10/Herald/Vitesse (Sports 6) Consultant *
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