How do I find out when my C3 Corvette was built?

Read the Fisher Body trim tag on the driver's door hinge pillar. St. Louis cars (1968-1981) show a letter and a day (for example H15) that decodes to an exact build day; Bowling Green cars (1981-1982) show a letter, month and week letter (for example C03B) that decodes to a build week. The VIN alone does not contain a build date.

What is a Corvette 'birthday'?

It is the day (or week) the car's body was built at the factory, taken from the Fisher Body trim tag. Final assembly, shipping and the first sale came later, so the build date is not the same as the delivery date.

Your C3 Corvette’s Birthday

Q: Can I get my Corvette's build date from the VIN?

No. The VIN gives the model year, the assembly plant and the build sequence number, but not a date. Use the VIN to confirm the year and plant, then read the trim tag build-date code for the actual birthday.

The VIN does not hold a build date. Your Corvette’s real birthday is stamped in the Fisher Body trim tag on the driver’s door hinge pillar. Enter that build-date code below and we’ll turn it into a day (St. Louis cars) or a build week (Bowling Green cars).

Fisher Body · Body Build Date

Model year

Build-date code

St. Louis: a letter + day, like H15. Bowling Green: letter + month + week, like C03B.

Good to know before you celebrate

The trim-tag date is the body build date. Final assembly and shipping came days to weeks later.
Build date is not the same as the sale or delivery date.
A car finished late in a calendar year is usually an early next-model-year car.
Bowling Green (1981-82) tags give a build week, never an exact day.
The VIN sequence is production order, not a date, so it does not encode when the car was built.

Decode from a VIN instead

A VIN has no build date, but it tells us the model year and plant so the form above is set up correctly. Enter your full VIN and we’ll fill those in for you.

Full VIN

Engine stamp (advanced)

The engine pad stamp dates the engine, not the car (it was typically cast days to weeks before assembly), and only means something on a numbers-matching car. Format: plant letter + month/day + suffix.

Engine pad stamp

How the C3 Corvette build date calculator works

People come to this page asking all sorts of things: how old is my Corvette, when was my C3 built, what’s the birthday of my Corvette. They almost always reach for the VIN first, and that’s the catch: the VIN tells you the model year, the assembly plant and where the car sat in the production run, but it never tells you the day it was built. The only place the factory wrote down a real date is the Fisher Body trim tag. Read that little code and you get your car’s birthday.

Step 1: Find your trim tag

Open the driver’s door and look at the body where the door latches. That is the hinge pillar / “A-pillar” area just below the dash.
You’re looking for a small aluminium plate that says BODY BY FISHER. It’s riveted on and packed with short codes.
On the top line, off to the right, is a short group like H15 or C03B. That’s the body build date. Ignore the paint and trim codes for now.

Step 2: Read the code

There are two styles, depending on which plant built your car:

St. Louis cars (1968-1981) use a letter then a day number, like H15. The letter is the month and the number is the day of the month, so you get an exact day. The twist: the letter doesn’t always mean the same month, because each model year has its own letter-to-month list (August is usually where the year starts), which is why the tool asks you for the year first.
Bowling Green cars (1981-1982) use a letter, then a two-digit month, then a week letter, like C03B. Bowling Green stamped the week, not the day, so the best anyone can do here is narrow it to a build week.

Step 3: Check the tool by hand

Don’t just take our word for it. The math is simple enough to run yourself. Here’s a St. Louis example:

Say your 1968 tag reads H15.

Count the letters for a 1968 car: A = Aug 1967, B = Sep, C = Oct, D = Nov, E = Dec, F = Jan 1968, G = Feb, H = March. The 15 is the day.

So H15 = 15 March 1968, exactly what the tool returns.

Type it in above and you’ll get the same date, with the weekday spelled out. That’s the whole trick: the tool just carries the full letter list for every year (1968-1982) so you don’t have to. To double-check your own year against a printed chart, the VetteRegistry trim-tag list is a good second opinion.

Common questions

Can I find my Corvette’s build date from the VIN alone?

No. The VIN gives the model year, the plant (S = St. Louis, 5 = Bowling Green) and the build sequence number, but not a date. Use the VIN to confirm the year and plant, then read the trim tag for the actual birthday. The box above will fill in the year and plant from a VIN for you.

What’s the difference between the build date and the “birthday”?

They’re the same thing here: the day (or week) the body was built at the factory. Just remember it’s the body build date; final assembly, shipping and the first sale all came later, sometimes by weeks or months.

What if my tag is missing or unreadable?

The engine pad stamp (under “Engine stamp” above) dates the engine, which is usually within a couple of weeks of the car if it’s the original engine. It’s a decent fallback, not a substitute. Your best bet for a paper trail is a GM build sheet or a Corvette history report keyed to your VIN.

Why does a late-1967 date show up for a 1968 car?

That’s normal. Corvette model years started in the late summer or autumn of the year before, so a car built in, say, October 1967 is an early 1968 model, not a leftover 1967. The tool spells out the calendar year so there’s no guessing.

Sources: VetteRegistry C3 Build Dates & Trim Tag, C3VR forum, and the Corvette-C3.com VIN decoder.