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Deciphering VINs and production order

fatcat

New member
I bought a 2021 Grand Cherokee Limited on December 30, 2021. It was built or released to the dealer on December 24, 2021. If, as used to be the case, production was halted between Christmas and New Year, my car could be one of the last off the production line. Is there a way to tell the production order of a vehicle? I'm just curious because I think it would be neat to have a car built on the last day of production. I deliberately went with a '21 because I figured the '22s would be more expensive (they were by about $2,800 for the same car with the same equipment) and more trouble prone (don't know about that yet), as many new models are. Also, the hood of the '22s look like a cave man's brow and aren't that much different otherwise.

I had emailed David Jeep in Glen Mills, PA, at 4:00 on December 30. By 5:00 I had bought the car for sticker with a 0% loan and was given a loaner, which I picked up the next day. I had never had any contact with that dealership before. In today's world, I thought it was a very good deal. I figure they made things quick and smooth because they were trying to make a year end quota. The car came off the truck on January 12, and they delivered it to my house and took back the loaner that day.

BTW, I love the car. I had been looking at BMW X5, having been a BMW aficionado for years, but was unimpressed. BMWs have regressed into being the indistinguishable near clone of every other manufacturers. New X5s are 20 grand more than the Grand Cherokee Limited and a 3 year old X5 is about the same price as a new Limited. The build quality of the Limited is easily as good ad the BMW.

I will appreciate any input on my question about production order. Thanks.
 

vandi

Member
There is sticker on your driver Door jamb that has an MDH (Month/Day/Hour) (do a google search for Jeep MDH)

It will not tell you the production order, but it will tell you manufacturing time.
vin-jpeg.148969


The MDH format is MMDDHH where MM is the month, DD is the day, and HH is the hour.

Month - two digit representation of the month produced
01 - January
02 - February
03 - March
04 - April
05 - May
06 - June
07 - July
08 - August
09 - September
10 - October
11 - November
12 - December

Day - two digit representation of day on month produced
01 - first day thru 31 - thirty first day

Hour - Two digit military time vehicle was produced
01 = 1 AM thru 24 = 12 PM

Example:
MDH 100819
decodes as:
10 = Tenth month (October)
08 = Eighth day
19 = Nineteenth hour (7 PM)

This should be valid for any Chrysler Vehicle.

As for any details in the VIN? Don't think so... I have a 2023 on order that since July 5th. and have a VIN, I've been watching '23 show up on Jeep and dealer's websites as being build or in process and seems like they jump around somewhat. I'm wondering if they assign VIN by Order serialization and not by build schedule, especially since I don't have a build date yet.

I had a '95 Jeep YJ Jeep Wrangler that was probably one of the last YJs made before the line shutdown before switching over to the '97 TJs. I ordered it in Feb '95 and received it in April. Deaker didn't know if we would actually get it before the cut off, but sure enough did!
 
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