1964 Malibu SS
Fisher Body Number Plate - Fremont, California Assembly Plant (BF)
Body plates at Fremont did not use group option codes but next to the ACC. verbiage although Fremont did use regular production codes (RPO) such as A37 and B70. Body dates of months 1 through 9 were not padded with a leading zero to make a 3-character body date. 'Early' Fremont plates have a unique 4-digit body date; this changed to the 'standard' 1-, or 2-digit month with single week letter on 10A. Fremont did make a distinction between an inline 6-cylinder engine and a V8 engine with the style number.
This means that a V8 Malibu sport coupe would have a style number of 5637 where an inline 6-cylinder engine Malibu would have 5537. Fremont was the only U.S. assembly plant to do this. Fremont used the same blank Fisher Body Number plate throughout the 1964 model year. The blank plate has the text CHEVROLET DIV. GENERAL MOTORS CORP. and DETROIT, MICHIGAN on the first two lines and THIS CAR FINISHED WITH Magic-Mirror ACRYLIC LACQUER and BODY BY FISHER on the bottom three lines. The words STYLE, BF, BODY on the third line were consistent along with TRIM and PAINT on the fourth line and ACC. on the fifth line.
Strangely Fremont Fisher Body Number plates put the words BODY and PAINT before the assembly plant designation, body number, and paint code. The body date, style year and number, body number, trim code, and paint codes were stamped for the specific car as it was scheduled for production. Fremont did use a hyphen character between the year and style number but some early model year run Chevelles did not have the model year 64, only the style number.
One might see something like 64 5837 from October 1963 on but just 5837 before October. The plant designation letters BF immediately followed the BODY text and the body number was not padded with leading zeros so this could be anywhere from a 1-digit body number to a 4-digit body number as applicable for the time and style.
Fremont had two unique stampings on their Fisher Body Number plates. Generally stamped above the body number was a number like 5-2 that corresponded to a job number found on the interior trim sheet. This number has nothing to do with any options and is of no real significance today.
Fremont is the only U.S. plant to use letters for the paint code as opposed to a 3- or 4-digit number used by other 1964 plants after October 1963. Fremont paint codes before October used a 3-digit number like the other 1964 U.S. plants. Fremont is also unique that the paint code letters will show the upper body color letter first followed by the lower body color letter. A third paint code letter was often used to depict the color the wheels were to be painted. Sometimes this third letter was separated by a space from the first two, sometimes not.
The 2-, 3-, 4-, or 5-digit number stamped in the lower right corner is the manifest sequence number from the production broadcast notice and may be truncated to a maximum of 5 characters if the manifest number is 6 digits.
Example of 'early' style Fisher Body Number Plate
Note the model year (64) is not stamped on the plate before
the STYLE number. Also note the odd body date
format of "1097."
Example of 'late' style Fisher Body Number Plate. Note more
conventional body date format of "10C."