Total Spiders Built

[bradartigue]

I am going to make an educated statement here for discussion. I think the total number of Spiders produced was 184,638. This is higher by 253 than the most accurate thing I can find, which is pininfarina's own production number sheet from 1970 onwards (http://www.406coupeclub.org/media/docum ... 202005.pdf). Want to lose part of your brain to figuring things out? Here's the logic...I think:

From pininfarina's own numbers you come up with 172,818, but they did not keep records from 1966-1969. The fall back is to use the body number, as they were sequential year over year back then. We come up with 5619 vehicles built prior to 1970, or a total of 183,372. This number can be computed both by using the pininfarina sheet and adding the 5619 AND by deducting chassis numbers all the way through 1985 by using the serial numbers and doing the math. So I'm pretty comfortable with this number.

The bogie is it is missing the 1013 CSA Spiders. I don't know why but they don't seem to have been recorded by pininfarina. If I am correct then the difference between my research and the more credible numbers out is very low, only the 253 I stated.

Why is this interesting? The history of the cars fascinates me. I think the number of absolutely incorrect references out there are alarming - and the ones that should be credible (the scanned pages from the Linearossa parts book comes to mind) are terrible (Spider CSC? huh?) Some have 30,000 cars made before 1970, others have the 1970 serial numbers in the 1971 range, etc. Most have the ZFAA VINs all out of whack (FIAT didn't help, they did it wrong in 1981 and had to reset in 1982).

In the end I'll come up with a spreadsheet with all the different ways I've seen the numbers displayed and let the reader decide. These days cars are so boring; I like a car where who the hell knows when it was made...or in which plant...or in what order.

AS 5619
BS 10526
BS1 29906
CS 10730
CSA 1013 (may be 1,003)
CS1 69208
CS2 16926
CS0 32060
CS0 700 Turbo (may be lower but if so the numbers go into the CS0 range)
DS 7450
VX 500 (i think this is the total for 1985; VX was available earlier than 85)

[Jimb]

Volumex was 500 total; 200 in 1983 and 300 in 1985.

Jim

[bradartigue]

Volumex was 500 total; 200 in 1983 and 300 in 1985.

Jim

Where did this come from? (I'm not being a jerk, I honestly can't find much of a reference on the VX). Were they serialized differently (as in, did the VIN have a specific number in it showing which were VX?)

[Jimb]

http://auto-klassik.ch/2012/05/20/pinin ... ck-abgang/

https://www.fiatspider.de/de/der-spider ... ahlen.html

http://www.automobile-catalog.com/car/1 ... lumex.html

http://www.pininfarinaazzurra.com/home.html

Jim

[bradartigue]

This is more like a late night brainstorming session...anyway I changed my formula and it makes sense. Here is what it looks like from this huge pile of stuff I printed out while trying to figure all this out....and it sure isn't perfect, but no one seems to know. Fun to validate these things, or try to.

But I didn't give up on production numbers. Pininfarina's number being a credible source we know they made 172,818 bodies. These don't deal with AS production at all, 1966-1969 they don't document. If we plug in Buckley's number (which is what many websites use you have 32,327, which results in 205,145, which is too high, the serial numbers don't reach that high (if you computer the sequence the total is 194,896).

The average of all of the resources I reviewed was 187,924 (which is meaningless, but at least they average out to a number close to what we think the totals were).

I computed a ramp, based on pre-69 and post-69 figures and used the ramp and average from steady production to come up with 8,801 cars in 1969, or 192,532 cars, which is close to the serialization sequence, close to Mirafiori's total, and close to losing my mind.