Commission numbers

[Cov1500]

Am I right in thinking that cars are built in Commission number order? The reason I ask is I emailed the Motor Heritage place asking about the build date of my car and how it relates to the start of production. Even though the number is very low they say that chassis WB/1 was built two and a half moths earlier?

[Jon Tilson]

Yes you would hope so....

Jonners

[Toledo Man]

Didn't they have batches of them made and on the production line they will have just taken whatever plate was at the top of the pile?

[MIG Wielder]

From my experience of the consumer mass-production world for something like the Motor Industry I would think that the first 100 or so cars produced would be used to improve the production flow; de-bug the assembly time vs manpower; and reduce items like test time and generally ensure a smooth flow of vehicles off the line.
As such the first cars would be very much a pre-production test. The line would then be stopped while the bugs thrown up in the first-off run were corrected. For a largely mechanical assembly process I can see this running into weeks of intensive production engineering effort.
Tony.

[Cov1500]

If the plate on the car is correct my car was built on 30th June 1970. The chassis number is less than 50, number one being built on the 10th of April.

[PaulB]

We spent Thursday last week browsing the build archives at Gaydon. A mixture between looking for hens teeth and watching paint dry!

Its is basically a long list of the cars as the came off the production line, all models are mixed up.

We were looking at the history of VA6 and we did eventually find its build record. The early Sprints were registered on the build record as Swift 35, we didn't look for the date at which they became registered as Sprints. But the build rate of these early Sprints was very slow. The 'latest' car we found was VA26 and it was built over a month after the first.

Later in 1973 according to some of the press article they were producing 600 Sprints per day, so they must have got better at it!

The build rate of your early car was probably very similar.

[shaunroche]

600 per day? Really?
That works out to be about 150,000ish sprints in one year?

Still, I think that sounded like a fun day out, genuinely....you must have read or determined some interesting things!

[GrahamFountain]

Its is basically a long list of the cars as the came off the production line, all models are mixed up.

I've been thinking for some time of going to do some research on these records, though I don't know that it'll ever actually happen. But, just in case...

I take it from the above that it's basically a list just in date order. So how do the BMIHT archivists find the build date and production data from the chassis number for the record search result certificates?

If you know the build date first, you can presumably do a simple "binary search" for the right day's production. But if what you start from is a chassis number and it's not ordered by them, the binary search won't work. Or is there some partial ordering by chassis number so that a binary search gets you close enough, i.e. to a few days, to sift the right one out by looking at them all sequentially?

[xvivalve]

I don't think binary searches work with microfiche...

[GrahamFountain]

I don't think binary searches work with microfiche...

As an algorithm, it works with any ordered set of data however they are stored and accessed: Look at the (roughly) middle item of the set, and if that gives a result that's greater than the value you want (in this case later than the date), go (roughly) halfway back to the start. If it's before the date you want, go (roughly) halfway to the end. Then repeat in the half you're in, then in a quarter, then in an eighth... Do that until you find the item your after or the values (dates) for the start and end of the subset you're looking at are the same.

It's a crude method, but if the data set is ordered by the search parameter and the result you search for exists it always finds a data item with that value for the search parameter, and it's very, very simple to implement.

But , obviously, what you really need with microfiches is a very, very small rod and line – or you could get Annette to do it.

Graham

[PollyB]

[quote="As an algorithm, it works with any ordered set of data" /quote]
I am afraid it was anything but an ordered set of data. I indeed used Binary Chopping to find the records but at least half are very difficult to read. The documents are scanned copies of original piles of build cards, 3 or 4 to a page. These have been turned into jpgs. Some are very scrumpled and a lot are bleached to unreadable.

If you want to look at them it is a good experience and I am glad we went but there isn't much. Photographing the screen is definitely not allowed.
If you want to go then take your Heritage certificate with you. The people there have saved you a lot of time.

[GrahamFountain]

If you want to go then take your Heritage certificate with you.

Is there a specific reason for that?

[triumphtoledo]

If it helps, several years ago, I went into Gaydon to research Toledos. Bear in mind that the Toledo and 1500FWD were launched at the same time, even though the 1500 had its body shipped from Liverpool to Canley to be trimmed, whereas Toledo stayed in Speke and was assembled there complete.

The first Tolly was ADG1DL. I think that this was the test prototype car (http://www.motorgraphs.com/content/thum ... nImage.jpg)

The other very early press production cars (from ADG2DL) were sent to the launch in Belgium, along with the early 1500FWDs, all of which bore single figure chassis numbers, from what I recall. The earliest build record I could find for Toledo was from ADG11DL.

The launch was held in September 1970, if I remember right.

Generally, for Toledos (and for 1500FWD, from what I could see) the commission numbers are roughly sequential but they did skip numbers, especially if there was a specification change.

The 1500FWD tended not to have many changes really, other than an increase in power, when the front nose badge changed its colours round; early ones (like yours) is a ‘black label’ model and I think the chassis number altered from WB to YB. Somewhere, I have the numbers.

I did see your car on eBay and thought it must have a very low chassis number; sounds like you might have the earliest one in existence…

R

[Cov1500]

I have yet to get the V5 from the DVLA but the numbers (engine/body) I gave them seem to match with their records and they are 'processing' it now. So hopefully I'll be able to get some details of previous keepers etc. The car was registered in Birmingham and, judging by some old receipts I have found inside seems to have been in the Berkswell area prior to going out of use in '93. I would be interested to find if there are any earlier cars out there....

[triumphtoledo]

Yay! nice one. Don't forget to change the tax class to "Historic", to get the zero rate.

R