2003-01-07 21:51:40 | Cliff Burk writes:

Former CA car purchased in Aug 1999 from a MD in Omaha NE via Ebay.

2021-08-17 19:05:42 | Lofty writes:

CA registration info includes a J69 prefix for the VIN.

2021-08-18 12:57:45 | pauls writes:

The J69 prefix was affixed by California upon arrival, it will not be on a Heritage Certificate. Even though people know about the prefixes there is no known documentation as to why California did it. It is assumed it was to establish the model year as unlike US cars there were no distinguishing difference between model years but that is speculation.

2024-04-28 11:16:28 | Cliff Burk writes:

Re the CA prefix of J69 - when I bought the car in 1999 I soon heard that Jaguar XKE purchasers in CA encountered a situation where the VIN number was "not long enough for the CA DMV database," which was designed for longer American VINs. The fix was to add 3 more alpha-numerics to the VIN provided by Jaguar and the result was noted on CA registration forms and riveted to the car to the left of the car's ID plate.

For this car, a trip to the Jaguar archives in England will show that the "birth record" book lists 20 cars per page. Page 287 shows who ordered it and the destination for 4 cars; only this one for CA.

2024-04-28 20:13:59 | pauls writes:

Cliff, that isn't the case. There was no world standard for VINs until approximately 1980 when the ISO 17 digit VIN was adopted and there would have been no reason to append the model year. For example Austin Healeys, had 10 digit VINs as early as 1953, however Healeys delivered to California also had the model year prefix and mfg. added BMCxx where xx is the model year.