Fnic99

According to the VIN decoder on the 928Registry, my production number is "280". My car is a 1991 S4. It looks like there was 387 cars brought to the U.S that year. When I pull the cover off the sunroof motor, it shows a signed date of 12/3/91. If car was the 280th produced, I would expect the production date to be earlier in the year. Is it possible that Porsche produced almost 30% of 1991's in December?

Alan

Nominal production years usually run from summer to summer (starting in the summer before the nominal year) - Porsche sometimes cheats a bit too with special vin change identifiers. So Dec is mid production year. Unless it was replaced later I'd expect your sunroof motor should be earlier - maybe 12/3/90 but NOT 91 - you sure? Dec 91 is in the '92 model year build window - and there wern't any builds that year for the USA.

Alan

the flyin' scotsman

I would have thought that perhaps Porsche used the typical European day/month/year so the sunroof label would be the 12th of March?

I also believe they started production for next years model in autumn of the previous.

Alan

Malcom - yes that makes total sense - I must have been gone too long... you know how it goes... timewise thats probably very reasonable too.

Alan

Rob Edwards

My '90 GT has a born-on date on the doorjamb VIN tag. Was that no longer done in '91?


EDIT: Agreed, 3/12/91.

pcar928fan

Totally agree... Dec '91 would have been '92 MY...none of those in the US...save for mine and it is only here because I spent a zillion $$$$ importing it back in 2000. You can call NHTSA to confirm that if you like. I did...

Great looking car BTW!

Fnic99

Thanks for your help. I believe you hit the nail on the head; probably built on March 12, 1991. Wouldn't it be great if the world could come together and at least settle on a standardized date format.

Bilal928S4

The world has! We just don't want to follow.

Vilhuer

Its very likely most of the '91 MY production was done already in few earliest months of the model year meaning late summer 1990. Drop in number of US bound cars went down from over 1000 in 1989 MY to 417 in 1990 and to just 369 in 1991. Back in 1987 MY they had made over 2200 in single model year. Based on drop like that its easy to understand why Porsche wanted to completely stop making US models for 08/91-12/91 period and clean up distribution network of last S4 and GT before GTS was even brought in starting from 01/92 as early '93 model.