I brought this up before, but maybe some aren’t aware. The first time I heard matching numbers mentioned was around 1979. It was an article about a guy in the Midwest that had a junkyard full of Corvettes. All the way back to 1953. But he had a lot of mid-year cars, 1963-1967. I saw a reproduction skinny “Gold Line” bias ply tire for restoration. At the time, custom Vettes were all the rage, but guys were starting to restore mid-year Vettes. The ‘65 327/375 Fuel Injected version was one of the ones being brought back to OG. I don’t know how the numbers on the block thing infected the Mopar community, because it said right in the VIN 5th digit what engine the car came with. In ‘79, the Mopar muscle cars were still being driven by high school teenagers. It was more than common to build another 383 or 440 to drop in on the weekend to replace the tired one. These were daily drivers. And quite frankly, the cars that all the folklore is about. Fast forward to 2015… and I find out that no Corvette, or any GM muscle car had the engine designation in the VIN during the muscle car era.It was a lightbulb moment. Your ‘67 L71 427 Corvette had to have matching sequence numbers to prove the 427 even came in the car, as opposed to a 327. Same thing with an LS6 454 Chevelle, a 455 Stage 1 GS, or a 400 Ram Air IV GTO. That changed in 1972 for GM, and the engine was in the VIN, but by then the muscle car era was over.
