production figures for 66/67 911S

[Allen Henderson]

Hi Scott,

IMHO, rarity does not by itself make any (thing) car collectible. BTW, of course anything can be "collectible" if there is some ONE who wants to collect it. However, if we are talking about a collectible that may apreciate then rarity is but ONE factor others, to name but a few: racing heritage, provenence, beauty of design, significance of design, etc.
Specific to your interesting observation on the '67S, many, most?, SWB cars have rusted away and are gone making them even more rare. BTW (again) the 911E is rarer than and S but not nearly as valuable. Why? See above.
-Allen-

[HughH]

allan

good work. And you have started a debate about some of the numbers I see

by my reading, and all of my reference books, the number produced for 1968 "L's" in total in the table, or US "L's" in the various posts here or on pelican, is overstated by 5000 caused by either a misprint that has been perpetuated or a misreading of the numbers.

The US production numbers start with number 5001 (ie 11 -for 911- 8- for 1968- 1 - for L coupe - 5001 onwards - car identity number- as distinct from serial # 0001 onwards for ROW cars).

The USA coupe numbers go to #5549 ie 449 cars.

in some of the posts on pelican an extra digit - either a "5" or a "0" depending on the post, crept in making it look like there were an extra 5000 cars made. This is easily seen by counting the digits in the post - the ones that look like over 5000 cars were produced have one too many digits in the chassis number.

This is plainly incorrect, even the logistics would not work to make that many cars let alone the maketing logic to make so many USA "L's' compared to other versions.

apart from that, and the inconsistency with the 65 and 66 production numbers mentioned in another post, and covered extensively on this board in the past, it is a great effort.

[hgarazo]

I completely agree with Allen's statement. I was really surprised that there does not appear to be a widely accepted figure for car production numbers.

Some of the model production numbers do seem surprising. Any SWB is fairly rare, but these numbers seem to make them some of them even more so. Maybe we can pool our resources to figure this out.

[HughH]

refer my previous post

the same logic applies to the number of US "L" 68 Targas as well, It is overstated in the table by 5000 for both US and the total as well.

by the way the www.elferhelfer.com site has all the details on chassis and production / engine etc numbers as well as being a fantastic source on colours.

[Allen Henderson]

I don't have my reference chassis numbers on this laptop but I do recall that there was a problem with the "5000" as reported above and I've corrected that in my table (once again, as I recall).

I will post a larger detailed spreadsheet with ALL ranges used tomorrow.

Other than the overlapping chassis numbers from 1967, the other specific year with confusing, impossible?, chassis numbers for more than one model and published in both PCA and Barth's book were for 1968.

-Allen-

[boxster03]

how about a count by color too LOL

[67Porsche911S]

Thank you all for the detailed information!
What makes me wonder is the figures stated in the little tech booklet for the mechanics. In my issue from 12.68 you can see both figures for model year and calender year. If I count the engine numbers for the 911S it comes out to 1143 for calender year 1966 and 1037 for calender year 1967 (only for the model year 67), making a total of 2180. This is less than the 2306 Allen stated for the coupe and Targa. Calender year 1966 end with engine number 961144 and calender year 1967 starts with number 961141, so there is an overlap of 3.

Has anyone an explanation for that?

[HughH]

Thank you all for the detailed information!
Calender year 1966 end with engine number 961144 and calender year 1967 starts with number 961141, so there is an overlap of 3.

Has anyone an explanation for that?

there is an easy explanation for that.

neither car chassis numbers nor engine numbers were produced completely in sequence even from day one.

It all depended on how smoothly the build went and, for the engines in particular, whether any rectification was needed. If you see video of the production "process" you will see that while it is an assembly line of sorts the cars are wheeled around from one area to another and there no "conveyor belt" type situation to try to keep them all in order.

If you look at the sequence of RS cars built - where you would expect the closest match between chassis numbers and engine numbers because there were no targa's nor other variants to "mess up" the sequence (although the M491 cars did) there is no consistency between the chassis number and engine number - some are close others are not so close.

Thus it would be not surprising to see the first car or engine completed in, say, january to have a lower number than the last in december.

Indeed a photo of the records of the first 30 or so cars made is in Aichele's book "forever young" which shows the first car completed was chassis #7 followed by #3 and #1 and importantly in a number of cases the original engine and gearbox number is scratched out and replaced with another one presumably due to defects. For example chassis #8 (300008) started with engine and gearbox number 8 but ended up with engine number 17 and gearbox number 62.
Therefore to attempt to determine the number of cars produced from engines produced or other data that is not specifically related to the chassis - like production numbers in the early days - is probably doomed to fail, or at least cause confusion.

[67Porsche911S]

Hugh,

this would explain the overlap. It was normal in those days that not every body or engine number was used or not in a strict order. But if I have the first and the last engine number it must be clear that there could be not more cars or engines of this sequence only less if not all numbers were used. So I am still wondering...