AMC Metal Door Trim Tag
New 68-76 AMC Metal Trim Door Tag BLANKS to replace your missing, painted over or corroded one:
On your AMC, this is a rectangular, vertical, riveted metal plate on the driver side door, about mid ways down. All AMCs had them. In 68, there were 4 mid colors: black, blue, green, brown. Black had been used since for 1964 for US. Brown for Canada. Due to changing federal government requirements the tag changed in 1968 to a dark green stripe; as did the text font and all the government standards dropped (which had threatened to overwhelm the small tag) to simply stating that "AMC had met all requirements from the Motor Vehicle safety Act of 1966" Cold Riveted in, this will give you some neat information about the car! The rivets are difficult to find and were called Rosette Rivets. This close up of a 70 AMX Shadow tag shows the four Rosette rivets on corners. The digits, numbers and letters on your tag were reverse pressed by a Addressograph machine. Basically same machine used to make credit cards and dog tags.
The SEQUENTIAL number applies TO THE BODY ONLY, NOT THE WHOLE CAR. It
was to track running changes in that year model in design and engineering.....and
a record of the body on the line. What you are looking at on the tag top to
bottom:
BODY
MODEL
TRIM
PAINT
EAST OR WEST LINE
which is the series of numbers/letters on the bottom row.
The BODY NUMBER differs between body plants. Kenosha and Milwaukee main body
plant numbers start with 000001. Kenosha Lake Front Plant bodies start with R000001. The Kenosha plant had TWO assembly lines, East & West. Cars built
on these separate lines were given separate numbers and a E or W prefix. Canadian built cars had a C prefix.
The MODEL NUMBER: The first two digits are the YEAR. The last three digits
of the model number are the SERIES, BODY STYLE, and TRIM LEVEL and *SHOULD* MATCH THE 4TH, 5TH, AND 6TH DIGITS OF THE VIN.
(example=7039-7 would be 70 AMX)
The TRIM CODE: Trim code will tell you what type of interior you
had, base, vinyl, corduroy, leather and so forth, you will find most under see PRODUCTION
NUMBERS.
The PAINT CODE will tell you what color the car was originally. Some
vehicles had two paint codes like P84/P82. This would have been a lower
Commodore Blue with a upper Bayshore Blue top! This is my 74 AMX, a original
Maxi Blue paint with white vinyl top (F2-WH) for instance with 2 paint
code.
AMC had a variety of original AMC Paint Suppliers Rinshed Mason, Martin Senoir and DuPont to name a few. To view my paint charts CLICK HERE. Note they are PRINTABLE and armed with that you can take the page to your automotive paint supplier who can then mix up all you need.
The BOTTOM
ROW of letter followed by numbers was the LINE
NUMBER, commonly called
the CAR
BUILD SEQUENCE BODY NUMBER. This was usually off by a few weeks preceding the vehicle VIN. Read closely, as
most of this history year wise was never found or documented and deciphered. E
is East Line, W is West Line, the east line produced the smaller cars like
Rambler, Gremlin, Hornet, Javelin & AMX, while the west line reserved for
big cars of Ambassador, Matador & Rebel; however due to high demands of
smaller cars like Gremlin & Hornet, the west line could quickly be adapted
to produce smaller cars.
Here is a AMX (on left, note 6839-7 signifying a 68) and a Javelin Door Tag on
the right, note Model is 6979-7 signifying a 69 SST. Look closely and you
will see how the text changed from 68 to 69 at the top 1/2 of the tags. The
words in the stripe also became more bold.
Here are three 68 AMX door tags from parted
out AMXs. Note the center color difference. The center is blue stripe and
has all the different standards the government required, and is a early 68,
while other two show mid year build and changes to tag.
And YES, contrary to popular belief or what some AMC gurus will tell you, AMC did make mistakes. I have owned a number of typoed door tags, and some are outright goofy, like this original 1970 door tag.
I bet you can't figure out what it is above? (There was no 68A paint color in 1970, This Big Bad Blue is a Big Bad Typo.
This one above is 82A type in paint code. Yes, another paint typo, not sure how it got painted correctly, but not uncommon.
Hurst SC/Ramblers had four paint codes of 00, SPECIAL, SPEC, and 88A. Here is a fifth paint code for SC/Rambler never seen before. Shows 00A for a "A" paint scheme SC/Rambler.
Here is one that I was bluntly told by one such "guru/blowhard", a few times, that AMC never did. This 70 AMX I bought in Corpus Christi, TX from my brother, who bought it from original owner. It was used for the GoodYear tire company magazine ads. The VIN is ALSO stamped on the door trim tag. It was the 90th car built, down the line, and the 32nd body, so it was first week of production in August 1969!
Should you ever need a used door tag, they command prices as cheap as $20, and
as high as $700, the price will depend on the color of the vehicle and trim
level. Should you ever need a new door tag pressed, note that Data Tags
does reverse stamping (there are more reverse stampers in Hemmings) as original AMC did.
Pierre Cardin W code.
Really simple code as shown on this 73 Javelin Trans Am Red trim tag. All
Pierre Cardin 72-74 AMX & Javelin will have a "W" in Trim
Code.
00 as a paint code.
AMC used the "double zero" 00 paint code for a variety of vehicles,
and for different reasons. Most are familiar with the 70 Trans Am Javelin having
a 00 paint code. But it was used for other applications for other models
including Rambler, Rebel, Javelin, AMX, Ambassador into the mid 1970s. This 70
AMX for instance had a 00 paint code for Shadow
Mask engine bay delete.
That means while the upper Shadow was applied, the engine was left body color. Same 70 from front showing Shadow. My 71 Matador 2dr with 14K miles was a A7/00 paint code.
In this instance the 00 meant vinyl top delete. Special Order AMCs also had them including police, taxi, pink AMXs,
dealer promotion vehicles to name a few. Don't read too much into a 00 paint code, however, it is usually recommended to see if you can trace that vehicle's history, could have been a Dealer Giveaway car, Parade Car, or some special meaning behind it getting that code!
