Data plate decoder?

[BobW]

@literarymadness I think that's about right. Also, in 1970 the Canadian and US exhaust emssion requirements were different. Exhaust emission regulations were introduced in the US in 1968 but it took Canada until 1971 to get around to them and they did not take effect before MY1972. They are, of course harmonized today and have been since 1988, although Canada agrees with California going forward and not with the Trump administration.

My impression from serial numbers in the registry is that 54/2885 was a late 1969 build, possibly December. It did not ship from the factory until March 1970.

[jbcollier]

It’s not the ride height, it’s the headlight height.

[BobW]

It’s not the ride height, it’s the headlight height.

True, which is the reason the front fender profile was changed on the Type 65. It's a personal bias, but I prefer the 54's curvier profile. But also, I believe the 65's ride height is the greater, all to the end of raising the headlights a bit further from the road.

[literarymadness]

So which engine was being put in the Canadian late Type 54's?  Since the vin numbers showed (+) before and after, it had to be slightly different in some way than the ROW S2s.

[jbcollier]

Only madness lies in trying to make sense of Lotus specifications and serial numbers.  The factory did whatever suited what they had to hand.

They had a bunch of unwanted type 65s?  Convert them to RHD and bingo you have UK type 65s.  All they cared about was shifting what they had.

[Bodzer]

The type 65 PR cars were part of a well known batch of cars that, due to a change in federal laws, were modified to RHD in an old hangar on the Hethel airfield. I think JB has a copy of an old Club Lotus news letter article by Graham Arnold on his smugmug pages that covers it.

Anything for a sale!

At some stage my VIN was shortened by a PO so it was re-registered as 274PR with the DVLA. A subsequent owner tried to straighten it out with them to no avail. It certainly caused abit of trouble when I imported it here to Ireland.

[4129R]

Paint colour was not recorded for the early cars.

and even the records for the later cars can be wrong.

I am told at least 2/7 of mine should be a different colour.

When you strip them down to bare fibreglass, you soon know the original colour and any colour changes. There is a lot of over-spray on the shell and in the doors.

[Pfreen]

As far as vins are concerned, my car, a tcs, was originally bought and registered in Florida.  It was registered as a 1974 car, (still is) and was sold in Feb of 1973.  The funny part is the vin registration number was 742963R.  However, when I moved to Ohio, they examined the vin tag, which of course reads 2963R.  I don’t remember all the details to get the title and registration in Ohio, but I have a stack of thermofax  paper listing all previous owners sent from Tallahassee.  The title was changed to the vin tag number and I still owned the car😊. 

Anyway, I moved back to Florida a few years later, and the Florida title is now 2963R.