Early '60s VIN numbers

[Oldsfan]

Riddle me this, Batman...

A friend and I are having a discussion regarding early '60s VIN number sequences.

He's got a '62 Starfire with VIN 626Cxxxxx (a Southgate car). He spotted a Starfire on eBay the other day and said to me, "This car is 38 Starfires away from mine." I asked him how he knew that, because there was no Fisher Body tag shown in the photos to show the body number. He said he was going by the VIN. I said that I thought there were 38 other Oldsmobiles between the two cars, not 38 Starfires.

He thought that VINs run in series:

622C01001 thru 622Cxxxxx for Dynamic 88s

624C01001 thru 624Cxxxxx for Super 88s

626C01001 thru 626Cxxxxx for Starfires

628C01001 thru 628Cxxxxx for 98s

So, you could (and would) have, say, 622C12345, 624C12345, 626C12345 and 628C12345.

I thought VINs ran consecutive for the whole line:

62*C01001 through 62*Cxxxxx (* being the code for model, which we don't know)

So no 2 cars would have the same last 5 digits.

Then he pointed out something else - A Lansing built Dynamic 88 on eBay right now. VIN is something like 622M55xxx. I looked at the VIN of my own Starfire, also a Lansing built car, and built very late in June of '62 as evidenced by the build date on the body tag, presence of an alternator, and bead molding on the side panels (so it's not a June '61 car). My very late car has a VIN of 626M15xxx, yet that Dynamic is 622M55xxx. Stands to reason that they built more D88s than Starfires.

So they must have used 4 sets of VINs at each plant, different only by the model designation, and had multiple VINs that used the same last 5?

I didn't think they would do something like that.

Thoughts, comments...

Paul