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« on: June 17, 2021, 07:57:32 PM »
OK, I got a bit of a surprise when I removed the Muncie M-20 from my Van Nuys built L35 car to install a clutch. Car is a 10A build, engine VIN checks out, but the Muncie has a completely weird looking VIN stamped on it. It is a faint stamping and pretty hard to read the last 2 digits, but it appears to be "76L103238". It has a date stamp of P9P10, which seems to fall into the acceptable range of when the car was built. I have owned this car for 25 years, it has a very solid set of documents including the build sheet, warranty transfer plate, a lot of old receipts, and a very extensive log book that was kept by the second owner (bought it in 1972) that lists every fuel stop and maintenance entry all the way up until the early 80's. To my knowledge, I am the third registered owner of the car, although it passed through the hands of a few collectors before I ended up with it.
A couple of other idiosyncrasies are that it has a jack sticker for a Firebird under the decklid, and a Firebird deluxe rear seat bottom.
I am aware that they were also building Firebirds on this line at the same time. Being an early build, it sounds like maybe they were having some supply chain issues or some other confusion. The second owner documents one clutch replacement while he owned the car, done at a GM dealership. It seems like the odds that someone would swap in a Firebird M-20 that happened to be built at Van Nuys with that date code would be kind of slim, and based on what else I know about the car, I feel fairly confident that it left the factory this way. Can anybody provide any insight as to how this could have been botched like this? I'm sure some will argue that someone swapped that transmission into the car somewhere along the way, but I would be very surprised if this was the case, although I guess it may be possible.
Looking forward to hearing some comments. Anyone ever seen anything like this?
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