Paint codes and vin numbers

[Cadman-iac]

 I had noticed the numbers on the inside of the front fenders on several vehicles in the past but had not really given them much thought.
Today I was walking past one of the front fenders from my '55 parts car and saw them again,  and it dawned on me that they might be important,  at least at one point in time anyway.
So I checked the numbers against the vin number and the data tag on the car and sure enough,  they match.
Then I decided to look at the '63 parts car and again,  matching numbers.
But my '56 doesn't have anything on them anywhere. The paint is still all original on it, it's never been painted.

Did the factory identify each set, or front end assemblies, or just ones with more common colors,  so as to tell which car they went to?

Here's the pics of both the 55 and the 63. The 55 is a light blue,  the 63 is white.

[Roger Zimmermann]

As the front clip was not painted in the same factory as the rest of the body, it was a method to identify which fenders/hood is coming on which car.

[Cadman-iac]

As the front clip was not painted in the same factory as the rest of the body, it was a method to identify which fenders/hood is coming on which car.

Thanks Roger,  I was unaware that they didn't paint it all in the same place. That makes sense then, but it doesn't explain why the front end on my 56 isn't numbered. I've looked it  over thoroughly and there's no numbers anywhere.
If they were numbered,  wouldn't it be in the same location as the 55 and the 63? Both of those have the numbers right behind the wheel well, on both the right and left sides.
  Did they put them in a different location for 56? Or is it as I suspected,  the more popular colors,  because of the volume,  were numbered, and the less common ones, because they came up less frequently, it was not necessary to number them? Just a guess here.

Rick

[Roger Zimmermann]

Sorry Rick, I have no answer.

[fishnjim]

Somewhere, from the '58 club, I have sequential photos from the '58s on the assembly line being painted - whole.   I'll have to search, 10+ years of photos on this machine and post.

Lots of mystique about markings.   We used to wipe them off when we detailed, but once the NCRS, PHS, etc. took off "authenticating" they started to document those "silly" details.   Frankly, I'd don't think it makes sense to blast all the sheet metal, paint it apart, and then add "phony" chalk marks.
This is pre-barcode production, so they did things with paper and pencils...   I doubt there's any consistency between shifts on how they operated.
I guess the best place to question this, is for the concours judges.

[Eric DeVirgilis CLC# 8621]

We used to wipe them off when we detailed, but once the NCRS, PHS, etc. took off "authenticating" they started to document those "silly" details.

Silly? 

[Jason Edge]

Silly? 

I think the implication is they were once considered silly, but not so much today, by at least some, in their effort to duplicate and/or preserve exact originality.  Restoration, and in fact preservation, seemed to be "simpler" back in the day with the emphasis on just making things look new and shiny.  I also see people today going to painstaking lengths to do things to restore what we considered blemishes (e.g. paint runs under the hood, firewall inner fenders) that we thought needed to be "corrected" in the past.