VIN vs Cowl Tag mismatch
 

I'm looking at a '68 Firebird that has a dashboard VIN of 223378Nxxxxxx and a cowl tag of 68-22437 LOR.

How can a car be built in both Lordstown and Norwood at the same time? Seems fishy.

Anyone encounter this before?

Whoops. It's not an N in the VIN, it's a U, which was Lordstown, so that's ok.

Still leaves the mismatch between 22337 and 22437.

the cowl tag will often have the characters of a base model, and the model RPO code will be a couple lines down.

as an example a 1970 Trans Am would have a cowl tag stamping of 22387 (base model Firebird), then two lines below would be the RPO code WS4 - which indicates it was a Trans Am.

I think it was done this way because the cars all started as base models, and as they went down the line became associated with a specific order number.

As long as the partial VIN on the Cowl matches the VIN, I would not worry about it. You may be able to see it, without pulling the cowl panel off.