Guess I missed initially an important question.
"Our car particulars: 1968 Metuchen coupe; Actual Build Date 07/24/68; Data Plate 8T01T225520; the rest 65A U 2AA 31U 16 6 1;
Our car does NOT have turn signal features on the hood. It does, however, have the turn signal features on the hood frame. As you can imagine, I am reminded that I have the wrong hood on our 1968 car. I know for a fact, as supported by the original owner, that the hood which we have is the hood used during the manufacturing process. There were NO subsequent modifications."
Was your car ordered with a turn indicator style or not. There was more than one style of 68 hood.
If your car was ordered with the turn indicator style - read on
Well the first difficulty with the story of " Ford, at least Metuchen, ran out of 1968 "turn signal" hoods...and made the decision to use 1967 hoods for which there was a lot of inventory left over from the prior year." is that the plant would not have stored last years hood left overs for 6 plus months. Not that much storage at the car plants - especially NJ and at San Jose they would move it on even quicker, to store all the possible left over for that long. What ever was left over got sold off to scrappers based on weight for recycling or got move into the supply system for the dealerships and repair shops. Add to these items that Ford and the stamping plant could with some ease, resupply the car plants given the period of time that past between when the strike was and when you specific car was built.
BTW anyone remember the dates of when the strike at the car plants started and ended? Would be interesting to see if we could find some hood stamping dates during that time period. Have record of a hood being made and dated (or at least the inner structure) on Nov 11th
Not sure what your using to identify 67 from 68 hoods. Both "flat" and turn indicator styles appear to have been available through out both years of production.
Here are examples (most from unrestored cars - pretty easy to tell) from the later part of production for 68 at NJ 8T19600-8T212xxx
But will start with the flat version of the 67 - late NJ example 7T2225xx
Late 67 production turn indicator style 7T227
And the 68's
8T196xxx
8T199xxx
8T206xxx
8T2098
8T212xxx Hard to see but flat hood with the inner liner/structure shared with the turn light hood
In addition have allot of spring and early summer 68 hoods with the turn indicator feature.
And also checked 68 NJ Marti reports that show there were at least some with the louvered hood option built 3 months before your car was built so if they were making them then they would have been available months later since we also have examples at the other plants