[WQ59B]

Originally Posted by John V.

...Mogol as Code 23-250 where it "fits" more appropriately in alphabetical sequence.

The issue with this is obvious upon reflection; the list could only be alphabetical for a short while after it's creation. New dealers with varied names would have had to be listed out of numerical/alphabetical order at least a majority of times.

And some dealers dropped out of business all along the timeline, even in the heyday of Pontiac minting money (the '60s). Tho this would mean their dealer number was 'available' (and they did get reassigned in some instances), that doesn't mean such a reassignment would be alphabetical WRT whatever a new dealer might be named.

Once you have '01 001 AA Pontiac' and '01 002 BB Pontiac' and along comes 'AB Pontiac' in that zone, the list is going to 'get out of whack'.

At some point I believe in the 1980s, a 'second tier' of dealers were alphabetically listed, at higher numerical numbers. In other words (for a hypothetical example); xx-001 ~ xx-400 was followed by xx-401 starting over with dealers named with 'A' again.

Also at some point in this period, some zones were eliminated/combined, resulting in 5 or 6 states in one zone instead of 2-3. Don't know yet exactly when this occurred.

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Obviously, PMD never 'engineered' this system to forever follow a rigid code of organization.