For some time lawmakers looked on powerless at a vehicle identification system that permitted manufacturers to sell the previous year’s leftover models by presenting them as freshly made. Nothing prohibited this—it was completely legal. In fact, the very idea of model years didn’t even exist at the dawn of the motoring age, and in fact no actual serial number existed prior to 1954. Not until car manufacturers discovered they could appeal to consumer envy and thus generate more sales by dating their products. Decades later in the 1960s in low sales years with few changes from year to year, it was equally easy to apply a different model year to a bike languishing on the showroom floor. But this eventually would change. In 1975, legislation finally mandated the addition of a model year to the motorcycle’s serial number plate, kind of the motor vehicle equivalent of the use-by date on your milk carton. A few manufacturers jumped the gun by a year or two, but all were required after 1975. Now consumers could purchase with intelligence. This was a good thing.

Vintage motorcycle owners are often unsure of the model year of their pre-1975 machine. It's kind of up for grabs. They resort to the many published collectors' resources that are available, including Honda’s own very useful serial number based Model Identification Book, plus specifications lists put together by vintage enthusiasts focusing on such things as types of fasteners, known paint colors, lighting equipment, taillight sizes and mirror shapes that changed from year to year. But manufacturers varied these things even within a given year for different sales destinations, and often sprinkled a handful of an upcoming model's parts on the last couple hundred bikes made prior. So going by equipment specs is not very reliable. Then there's the "after September" rule. The Internet wants you to believe that if a pre-75 bike's manufacture plate indicates September or later, then the bike is the following year's model. Often this is a pretty fair guess, inasmuch as generally, manufacturers conduct sales meetings in either September or October to reveal to their dealers next year's models. But it's not an infallible rule, unfortunately. For one thing, some new models are introduced mid-year. Further frustrating to the vintage collector and the purist is the well-known tack many state registration agencies took back then on pre-1975 bikes, the easy way out from their point of view, of simply assigning as the model year the year the vehicle is first registered. So for bikes made before 1975 things can be indeterminative. Up for grabs, almost. It’s all part of the fun.

Interestingly, 1975 was a really big year for consumer powersports legislation, bringing as it did the left side gear shift rule, headlights always on, and a host of similar new powersports vehicle laws. Among these was one you may not be aware of, but it was a biggie. The Magnusson-Moss Warranty—Federal Trade Commission Improvement Act, is its official name. This was the most impactive piece of powersports-related consumer warranty law up to that time. It’s where so-called “lemon laws” eventually came from, for one thing, and it empowered the consumer like never before.

Then in 1981 came another big change, the biggest of all, even up to the present time—vehicle identification numbers, or “VINs” as we often say. Until January 1981, every manufacturer had their own proprietary vehicle serial number system. They could do with it whatever they wanted, code it as they wished, and change it or reinterpret it any way they chose to. Two or more OEMs could have the exact same serial numbers, and the systems recorded only what the manufacturer wanted them to—or virtually nothing at all—and with no outside oversight or consideration for informing anyone outside the manufacturer's own offices. However, late in 1979, U.S. lawmakers wrote a new Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard (originally FMVSS 115 Part 571 but now Title IV Part 565 ) in which it was proposed that from the ‘81 model year forward (giving manufacturers ample time to comply) frame markings would, by law, consistently mean something across all manufacturers, and be universally trackable by anyone, not just the OEMs. The VIN markings would identify the vehicle, include engine size and nominal power codes for the benefit of Japan and Europe where licensing was based on these, and most importantly, communicate the model year, exact model/body style, the manufacturer's plant, and so on. And not for nothing. The VIN system was actually invented for the expressly stated and very real and vital purpose of increasing the number of vehicles successfully recovered and repaired in manufacturer vehicle safety recalls. Recalls, more than anything, are the VIN's reason for being. Up to then, recalls had a much lower completion rate. That is, many more slipped through the cracks. Even today, saturation is never 100 percent. But before VINs, it was far less.

So deliberate and comprehensive is the VIN system that it prohibits any two stampings from being indentical for a 30-year period. These identifications include an anti-theft code that if altered red-flags a stolen vehicle, and unlike a serial number, the VIN system is consistent across all manufacturers, because though originating in the U.S. and originally applying only to street-going vehicles sold in the U.S., it was applied worldwide, though some countries reserved the right to alter the requirements slightly. And, manufacturers who produce fewer than 500 units a year have special dispensation. But no manufacturer wanted to be left out of the U.S. market. This is where we are today. And this is why a frame number on most street-legal vehicles marked as a 1980 or earlier model communicates at best only production sequence, i.e. "serial" information—why it's called a serial number. A seventeen-character VIN by contrast records not only serial information but a lot more, by means of its mandatory sections revealing everything but what the assembly line worker had for lunch. Thus, calling a serial number a VIN is incorrect and in a practical sense misleading, since a serial number, if it conveyed much that was useful at all, was of no informational benefit to anyone other than the manufacturer, and often very little even then. A VIN by contrast is full of information vastly more useful to the authorities, including law enforcement, insurance companies, lawyers, and government agencies.

Part 5