Hi,
I was trying to reach you outside this venue, but all attempts failed...
In defense of my position on the serial numbers, this effort was started in the mid 90's. Back then, I don't think anyone knew just how many cars, throughout the entire production span were still viable. It became "something to do" as they came through Ebay and similar venues.
At some point, it became necessary to separate the major number groups, likely because the pages were getting too large to load with the 2400 baud modems. Not too many of us had internet at that time.
The VIN number imprimatur was being thrown around in the late 60's but Avanti II's always seemed to duck the bullet with that and emission issues because the company was small enough to do that.
I have to admit that, over the years, I wasn't much aware of which of the pre 1987 and earlier cars, had a 12AAV VIN number. I can say for certain that there are 81's with a 12AAV tag at the base of their windshield and the last 4 digits correspond to the RQB number. The earliest Avanti I know of in the listing with a "12AAV" vin is, 1981 RQB-3204 and there are likely earlier ones. (Most) Everybody used the old RQB-nnnn in their communications or business deals, but the "12AAV' came more to the fore when Kelly and Cafaro started dancing.
I'll guess it was the last of the steel bumpers that pushed me to instantiate the "AAV-nnnn" to delineate cars after Blake sold the company and there was an RQC in there, to boot.
The only major revisions ever done on these files were to allow me to run scripts to calculate the number and type, etc. Reformatting all this data again would be actually, only a slightly onerous task, so maybe a long cold spell next Winter, will be just the time.
BobJ (avanti5011@gmail.com)
