I kinda dig the color scheme...
And here I was thinking, "They left the part out where he told them the only one he could afford was the ugliest one ever built."
While not as bad as the butterscotch Hemi Road Runner with the orange seat inserts, this thing is one serious fashion misfire. :doh: Hard to fathom not going for the Rallye cluster here, but I guess they went "all in" with interior hideosity. Love the lack of radio, though... would love a "delete" plate for the Valiant.
It's a shame they didn't build any 4-speed ones, but since there was no small-bolt Dana it makes sense since they had a 5/50 warranty to consider. There was plenty of room for clutch linkage, since it would be in the exact-same place as the readily-available 383/4-speed Dart. Also, they didn't really get into it in the article but the reason none were built with power steering--a regular option on 383 cars--was due to the way they installed the LH engine mounting bracket. Rather than use the standard 383 mount, the M-code cars used a bracket that wrapped around the front of the block and used bolt bosses normally reserved for the power-steering pump. It wasn't a clearance thing; there literally was nowhere to bolt up the pump. The power brake booster wouldn't sufficiently clear the valve cover, hence no power brakes. That's a bonus if it's a disc-brake car anyhow.
Serial, sequence, and the "production date scheduled" (it does
not mean "scheduled production date") on the data tag have
absolutely no bearing on when the car was actually built, other than knowing the car was built
after the PDS code. The date code on the data tag is merely the day the car's VIN was added to the assembly line's production schedule. No car was ever built the same day it was put on the schedule. The
only way to know what day your car was built is to look at the date code at the bottom of the window sticker. The window sticker was printed when the car reached the end of the assembly line and passed QC, and the computer put a date code on it. The last Hemi car built, a '71 Charger R/T, has a both a lower sequence number and an earlier date on the data tag than the second-to-last Hemi car (also a '71 Charger R/T). The window stickers show the lower-number car was built on the last day of production, weeks after what was previously thought to be the "last Hemi" rolling off the line.
The data-tag date code of my old '73 Challenger is about two weeks earlier than the day the car was actually built. I still have both the build sheet and the window sticker from that car.
These cars weren't necessarily built in batches, so much as VINs were issued in batches, and hence it's likely they were added to the schedule in batches as well. In all likelihood, yes, they probably got built pretty close together, but it's more a supplier issue (having the right parts in place at the right time) than anything special or strange about the cars themselves. It's not like they were hand-assembled jewels--they were just as poorly built as any other mass-produced car at the time.
