Hello, I have been pulled into this discussion. I'm here to help! But I am at a bit of a quandry as how we're doing the VIN pages going forward myself.
I fully agree with the format as shown on such manufacturers as Gillig and Nova Bus, where they won't skip around with the VINs too much (with the exception of the nasty NY orders for both Nova Bus and co-owned Prevost), with short VINs (last eight characters starting with year code). The main caveat is that the full VINs need to be somewhere as not everyone wants to spend time figuring out an exact VIN given just the back end.
I don't disagree with combining New Flyer Industries' total production, including MCI coaches, into one file. Since the MCI VINs were reconfigured, there's just one pool of numbers being used now among both brands. MCI previously had an 81000 series for the DCRT's, 60000's for E and J coaches (which was just about to run out), 16000's for legacy D, 21000's for J3500's. A mess! And I'm hopeful that New Flyer's insistence on neat VIN sequences rubs off on MCI so we don't have another mess like the 2021 D4500CT's for New Jersey Transit, with two plants involved and the scrambled VINs still not completely solved!
I followed the lead of the Blue Bird All-American pages, a model that has been in continuous production since 1948. That first 2024 Prevost VIN comes from the parts catalog which cited the unit listed as the first 2024 H3-45.
