Speaking of weird, one guy had a green Boss 302 with a Vermillion interior, the only one built that way. There are a few yellow cars out there with blue interiors. The vehicle order image has a special column, where if a dealer wanted to override the system and order something out of the ordinary, Ford would put a code in column 77. Basically what that said was, "Mr. Dealer, when you submit this order, this is a nonreturnable car."
MM: Can you think of any other interesting things that come from the data?
Marti: There are always the people who become enamored with a car because it was built on their birthday or anniversary, or some kind of meaningful date.
There's also an interesting period during the UAW strike from September 6 to November 6, 1967. Of course, cars were scheduled to be built because Ford didn't know when the strike was going to happen. My wife's '68 convertible is an example. Her car was scheduled to be built on September 11 but by then the assembly plant had shut down. So her car just sat on the line, along with all the other cars, for two months. Then it finally got built in November. I've had customers report that a lot of oddball things happened on those cars.
Four Shelbys were built one day before the strike: a GT350 convertible, a GT350 fastback, a GT500 convertible, and a GT500 fastback. It's like they knew they had to get those cars built so they could get them completed as Shelbys for promotional purposes.
Another funny thing is what happened to a lot of cars that were built in early January. One of the dates we give on the reports is the release date. That is, after the car has been built, it goes through the inspection process, then they release it, which appeared on weekly and monthly reports about how many cars were built. A lot of early January cars have a release date of December 31 because they fudged the data to make the calendar year look a little better.
MM: Interesting. It's great that Ford allows you to do this, otherwise the information wouldn't be available to anyone.
Marti: As hobbyists, we should be grateful to Ford. They don't need to do this. To me, it's serious money when I write the royalty check. But to them, it's a drop in the bucket. I really am thankful that they were willing to do this.