A trick my dad taught me is to look closely at the tail light lenses. You will see a string of numbers and letters. The 2 digit year is always in those numbers. I have found this works for almost any GM car.
This is the SAE certification number for the lens. The year in the number series is the year of certification. For lenses used only one year on one car this method works fine. However lenses have been known to be reused in subsequent/later years, and the numbers
do not change in those cases.
A commonly mis-identified example are the lenses used on 1959 Edsels, which were 1958 Lincoln units that were re-used. Many European cars used the same lenses for years, for instance a 1979 MG Midget tailight lens was certified (and dated) in 1961.
In this case Buick used the same 2 lenses from 1950 to 1952; one for all 1950 cars & the 51/52 big cars, and a second for 1951/52 Specials. One would be dated 1950, the other 1951 regardless of the car it's found on.
June 28th, 2007
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