[bergy]

This subject has been discussed on this site before. Maybe I can add a little bit from my personal experience at the St. Louis Assy plant. Body numbers were assigned at the time that the order was keyed into the system. vins were assigned when the unit was released for line production. Production release on blanket orders was triggered by dealer green light - then component availability sequenced them in. COPO orders were manually flagged. The manual system wasn't fool proof at all - I remember car bodies sitting off line on the dollies for days (sometimes weeks) in St. Louis waiting for major components. Lots of times co-op students (like me at the time) would be assigned to follow the production and make sure that the COPO attribute was built. So - getting the COPO units produced in batches made it easier for knuckleheads like me to manually follow the production and give the line a "heads up". I remember baby sitting an L88 Corvette that we made for the king of Greece - unfortunately it got into the OK lot just before the strike (Thanksgiving until Christmas). Fortunately for us (the co-op students) we all got to "test drive" it during the strike!