Re: Model identification

Posted by HH56 On 2017/1/27 9:42:25

I am curious about the decal. In addition to the one year only use of the decal did Packard also use the motor number as the VN in 38 or is that a replacement or repro decal made when the engine was changed. I would have assumed the factory 38 decals would still have followed the custom of using the body number plus sequence number --- 1103-xxxx --- format for the VN and would probably be in the typical deteriorated almost unreadable condition.

I believe California had their own unique numbering system for re-registering vehicles with replacement engines since it is one of the states that registered by motor number and maybe other states did too but AFAIK, Calif kept the original patent plates and VN intact and issued an additional ID plate. IIRC, there was a suspected but unproven example of that plate shown a few years ago when some were trying to understand the strange motor numbers on their cars.