As we've talked about before those "dates" would only be the date they guessed they would be built on - from documentation they have shown to often be off by a month and other times right on
Quite right. The dates published in the book are the “scheduled” build dates. The actual build date could be off by a month or more, as is the case with my Sprint. The scheduled build date on the door tag and build sheet is May 10th, while the build date on the buck tag is June 21st – over 5 weeks difference!
Think that has already to be shown that they were both - depending on the need and order. Example the special order paint cars I've owned were purchased as single units (one special DSO) since they were ordered to fill a specific owners purchase) while others (example Shelby's and Calif Specials) were ordered under one special DSO of cars with the same options and requirements. Same goes for police car, taxi cabs, buses... orders placed through the same system as described in Ford documents
Is there a surviving Ford document that describes how they assigned special orders?
Believe you are basing your assumption on what you see in that particular book. I believe that most of the High Country Specials were part of a batch of cars under multiple orders (of similar cars and options) We just don't have the data from all of the models built but instead one from this group and one from another. Believe a half dozen or so more of these cars have been found since that book was printed (been over 15 years) that have the same DSO's as some of the others
Yes, the MPG book has been a good reference source of information for me. I haven’t been at this as long as you, Charles, and some of the other regulars here. I hope that by looking at some old data in a different way I can tease some new insights out of it.
I’m aware of 5 High Country Specials, all with different DSO’s. Some of these are convertibles and some are hardtops. Some have Black interiors, and one has Ivy Gold. And of course, there are the three different colors of Columbine Blue, Aspen Gold, and Timberline Green. If we begin to see a repeat in DSO’s as more cars surface, can we say with certainty it’s because they were part of the same dealer order? Or perhaps it’s because the color, body-style, and option combinations are beginning to repeat?
Remember that the VINs collected by the Jim's only represented less than 1/10th of 1% of production - not even a small sampling so IMHO its hard to draw any conclusion from the data since it is so small and relies on what part of the country participated
Even small samplings have merit, as long as the data collection methodology isn’t biased. The book represents vehicles from all over the world. I agree that it would be a mistake to take the inferences too specifically, but there’s certainly sufficient data to postulate some interesting trends.
The special paint colors, for instance, have a higher percentage reporting from the San Jose plant. This may represent a statistical anomaly like 12 successive heads in the toss of a coin. Or it might represent an actual trend. A piece of evidence supporting the later is the following ad from the April 7th 1966 Oakland Tribune. Perhaps the west coast dealers were simply more proactive in soliciting sales of special colors - as the Easter ad, and later the Rainbow of Colors promotions seem to indicate.