A lot of the codes on the body tag on my car are easily decoded, there are only two items on it that I can’t seem to find information for: Where it says Body No. there’s an A and G together. The A is the Atlanta plant but I don’t get the G, could be for Georgia, I don’t know. The second one that I cannot find is the TDP or possibly TOP there on the left bottom. So far as I can tell, the only accessory this car has are the electric windshield wipers and I don’t find any codes for that. I know the knowledge well here is deep, I’ve tried a bunch of different websites that have decoders but nothing has come up to explain this one.
The Chevrolet by the Numbers books by Alan Colvin have complete V.I.N. and trim tag decoding info as well as i.d. info on most major parts. All the info in his books are directly from the G.M. Chevrolet archives.
Looking at your body number, you have an early '55 chev from the Atlanta plant. I looked at the Danchuk cowl tag decoder and didn't see the 'TOP' identifier, but... I played a hunch and looked up the cowl tag format for '54 and it looks like your '55 cowl tag had a carryover format from '54 chevs... 17-original-specifications.pdf (danchuk.com) 1946 - 1954 Chevrolet Model Identification (oldcarmanualproject.com) Hope that helps
Looking at another example of body tags it appears that the TOP has its own stamp area like ACC does. I’m guessing but I’d bet it’s for convertibles, if it was for two tone that would be to denote which color is on top, again a guess, but would make sense. Thanks gotta56…
Two tone cars generally had a paint code suffix after the paint code number. Some single color cars had an 'A' after the paint code, which is sort of redundant There were two different two-tone schemes for 150's & 210's. Roof only 2nd color for '55 & '56 could show a 'B' suffix code after a two-tone paint color code. The 'belair' paint breaks on a 210 for '55' or the 'speedline' two-tone' paint scheme on a '56 had a paint code suffix of 'C'. Two-tone Belair cars had a paint code suffix = 'D'. Since yours is a single color car originally from the factory, just the number is fine for yours. sidenote: my day job is in computers as a database ****yst, so my work is data, data-anomalies, etc. For reasons even I can't really explain the cowl & vin tag decoding has always fascinated me, so I've looked at 100's of cowl tags for interesting things, and have seen a number of fascinating things. I've studied the Colvin, Danchuk and other cowl tag reference info, and have found other oddities and trivia hidden on the internet posted by people generally regarded as experts on tri-five matters when it comes to cowl tags, etc. I don't consider myself an expert, but an enthusiastic student of this particular minutiae as it pertains to tri-five chevs.
if you want to see what day your car was built, look here: https://www.trifive.com/d1/vin/55 Chev daily vins by plant.pdf
Weird and coincidental, I bought this car the day before its 69th birthday. DOM 10/07/54 Me buying it 10/06/23
According to my 55 Nomad KC PLANT # 1195 ( Sept 30 th. 1954) My late brothers 55 Nomad CL PLANT # 2265 ( could not find data for CL only Norwood Ohio)
Sorry to hijack the thread but @Moriarity can you provide above information for 57 daily production please?
From the GM Heritage center 55 Chevy pfd pages (gm.com) Where you find the links to different years pfd's Vehicle Information Kits | GM Heritage Archive | General Motors
Low Body number makes you want to wonder if it was one of the first 55 150's off the line and they had stamped a batch of tags with AG and later ones were just stamped A for Atlanta. 2944 minus 1001 would be the 1943rd 55 Chevy off the Atlanta line.
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