Auftrag No. Challenge

[Pawel66]

I was asked what is this Auftrag number saying: 70505436? It is on the datacard of a very late US 280SL, very high VIN, January 1971 stamp on the datacard.

This Auftrag number does not match our decoding mechanism.

Can anyone explain it? Have you seen this before?

I have two theories:
1. Daimler have changed the way Auftrag numbers are built. A friend of mine found information that in the 70ies Mercedes dropped coding of the year in theor Auftrag numbers, leaving just country codes and sequential number. They came back to the practice of coding the year in the 80ies (Bernd S. Koehling, Mercedes Benz, The 1950s, Volume 1). In this case, it would be country/dealer code 705 and then the sequential part. My friend has a "thank you" letter for car purchase from the US dealer.
However:
I found (in our Technical manual data card descriptions) an Auftrag number, just couple of hundred cars lower, done in a "normal" way for a car built in 1970.
So I am not sure about the infromation provided above. Do you have any information on it?

2. Perhaps there is a mistake in the Auftrag number (plenty of them on datacards!). Maybe the number is 07505436 - then it would probably mean the car was built in 1970 and delivered probably to some exotic territory to decrease the tax and duty costs.

Can you help? Do you have examples of Auftrag numbers close to the one I am showing?

Pawel

[MikeSimon]

My car is December 1970. Auftrags-Nr is 217-4467, but it is a German delivery.

[John Betsch - "SADIE"]

Simply for comparisons, my auftrags-nr on my data card and also on a "zertifikat" from M-B is 4 221 1397 for a car delivered on May 17, 1965 in Germany

jb

[114015]

Hi Pawel,

I was asked what is this Auftrag number saying: 70505436? It is on the datacard of a very late US 280SL, very high VIN, January 1971 stamp on the datacard.

Yes, this is an ordinary absolutely non-spectacular ordering number for a 1970 car:

705 - US delivery or ordered
0 - order year 1970
5436 - consecutive ordering number.

For 1970 ongoing orderings the "order year" (here 0 for 1970) was no longer preceding the dealer/country code
but succeeding.

Best,
Achim

[Pawel66]

Achim, thank you.

I was, obviously, not aware of that - swap of year and country code order.

It would be worth mentioning it in the Technical Manual.

Thank again!

[BobH]

I've just added this to the data card section in the manual

[TJMart]

I looked at my Auftrag No. and it is 94010311. I looked up Data Cards in the technical manual and am a bit confused reading it 
or I'm missing something? The 9 is the last digit of the year built 1969. Which is correct. Build date October 1969. The 401 is showing it was NATO affiliated. But I can't figure the 0311.
I assume it is the region country etc?

Can someone explain and decipher?

Thanks

Tony

[Pawel66]

I think the year shown in Auftrag number is the year of order, not when the car was built (in the example I started the thread with it is 1970 (0), while the car was built in 1971). Or in case of my car I have there 9, but the car was built in 1970. If a car was ordered a couple of months before the end of the year, the years of order and manufacturing did not match as there was a leadtime of several months between the order and manufacturing.

Then you have the region code, NATO in your case. The last four digits is the sequential number for that region. Your car was the 0311th car ordered for NATO affiliates in 1969.

[TJMart]

Ahhh! Thanks Pawel! Now it makes sense.
My car was ordered by a guy in the military stationed in Europe. He brought it with him when he was stationed back to the US.

Tony

[zoegrlh]

My German spec Pagoda has Auftrag No. 0 (1970 production) 247 (Reutlingen , Germany delivery) 0171