Motorama car VIN question

[Wildcat54]

Can anyone decode the following VIN?
2667332
The VIN is for the 1954 Wildcat II displayed at the Alfred P. Sloan Museum.

[TODD]

Buick at one time used straight numbers running from year-to-year to serialize their cars. But this example number would indicate a 1933 car, which is impossible. The number is too high to be an early Nailhead engine serial number.

Was the Wildcat II a fully operational vehicle? Quite a few of the dream cars were styling exercises and had no operable running gear.

This show car, due to its fiberglass body, wheelbase, length, and 2-passenger setup seems to draw heavily on the first Corvettes built around the same time. As you probably already know there were many fiberglass show cars from all GM brands entered in these mid-50s Motoramas that drew heavily from the original Corvette.

Websites abound that trace the initial development of the 1st Vette and its appearance at the 53 Motorama. Information dug up in one of these sites shows that cars were assigned shop order numbers when the GM design studio worked on them. One early 1954 Corvette styling project was assigned S.O. 2151. The 53 Corvette body type is shown as 2934 on the nameplate. This matches no other GM body style numbering sytem at the time. Had it gone into production, maybe the Wildcat II was going to be fiberglass body type 2667? Fully experimental cars which were to receive extensive road testing were assigned experimental car numbers beginning with XP (example XP-700).

Do you think its possible the Wildcat II was built up from a regular production Corvette? If the Wildcat II ran and drove, seems like the stylists and designers would have had an easier go of things by starting off with an operable production vehicle.

Other interesting items: The 300- 53 Corvettes were built in Flint, Mich. in an old Chevrolet customer delivery building. Although 1954 production was moved elsewhere, car #332 would have been a very early 54 model. This is lots of fanatasizing for sure, but maybe that's what is required to decode a dream car VIN?

[theoldguy]

Wildcat II is a drivable car! It has a 322 Buick engine with 4 side draft carbs. It is NOT a Corvette chassis, but one built by Buick. I drove this car about 4 years ago when we were getting it ready for the Buick Centennial display.

[Wildcat54]

Originally posted by TODD:
[QB] Buick at one time used straight numbers running from year-to-year to serialize their cars. But this example number would indicate a 1933 car, which is impossible. The number is too high to be an early Nailhead engine serial number.

Thanks for the reply to my question. Could you approximate the time frame of the serial number for this engine? The original specifications of the Wildcat II were laid out in an experimental order submitted by the Technical Data Section of the Buick Engineering Department on May 19, 1953. The wheelbase was set at 100 inches with a front tread of 59 inches and a rear tread measurement of 57 inches. The seating arrangement was given as "similar to the 1953 Wildcat." The general description also stated, "This is a special sport type car to be shown at the Waldorf show in January 1954." It was also to made "runable" in case Harlow Curtice or Ivan Wiles wanted one built for their use. The show car was assigned shop order number 1940. Curtice did drive the car in the Alfred P. Sloan Museum's collection; the VIN on the car matches the number typed on the Michigan Passenger Certificate of Registration issued for the car in 1959; this item is in the museum’s files. Also in their files is the operation manual for the Wildcat II with Curtice's name printed on the cover. Curtice evidently did not drive the car much; the odometer shows just 620 miles. I don't believe a Corvette served as the platform for this car. The wheelbase is two inches shorter than the Vette's and the Wildcat II has coil springs in front and rear. Thanks for whatever additional information you can provide.

[TODD]

It helps to know the number is the engine serial number. On second look, there is a way to make some sense of it as a Nailhead engine serial number. 1953 V8 engines were numbered from 2000 up to 273956. A V prefix was used on the first V8s, but this practice was abandoned on the cars sooner than the shop manuals and parts lists indicate. A suffix digit was added to denote the Buick model series. By stripping off the last 2 as a series identification digit, it comes in as 266733. This would be the 7223rd engine from the end of 1953 production.

Perhaps 2 was the intended series identifer (for series 20 cars) in case the new smaller cars went into production. This would follow Buick's earlier and later practice. The Marquette of 1930 was a series 30 car. The Special of 1961 used series numbers 4000, 4100, 4300 which were lower than the LeSabre's 4400 series.

I don't have any firm links to production dates vs. engine numbers, but some guessing can be done. Assuming equal production levels across the year, about 23,000 engines were built per month. This motor would have been built say in the last half of the last month of 1953 engine production. Using a final build date of July 1 for complete cars, the 53 engine production probably stopped a few weeks before that. That would easily put the build date for the engine in the late May-early June 53 time frame. This would have been after the S.O. release date. It would also have allowed maximum time to get the rest of the car ready for the January show.

Some slight allowance would need to be made for spare engine production in the serial number sequence. It should only be a few hundred though. This engine numbering saequence stopped at the end of 1956 production at about #2032047, which led me to think the number was not an engine number at first. You can see where these number ranges came from by clicking at the Year Info and Shop tabs at the top of this page.

There are date codes on some engine components such as the generator, starter, and distributor. But the codes will probably predate the engine build date by a few weeks.

P.S.: Thanks to Joe T for offering his knowledge and first-hand experience with this unique Buick.