C3 Corvette Trim Tag Decoder
Last reviewed August 2026, maintained by Corvette-C3.com
Read the whole trim tag on the driver’s door hinge pillar: the build-date code gives your Corvette’s birthday, a day for St. Louis cars and a build week for Bowling Green, and the paint and TR codes give the factory colour and interior. The VIN holds none of this. Fill in what your tag shows and leave the rest blank.
Fisher Body · Body Build Date
St. Louis: a letter + day, like H15. Bowling Green: letter + month + week, like C03B.
The exterior colour code.
The interior trim code.
Fill in the paint and trim codes too and the certificate reads your whole tag: colour, interior, and whether Chevrolet actually recommended that pairing.
Good to know before you celebrate
- The trim-tag date is the body build date. Final assembly and shipping came days to weeks later.
- Build date is not the same as the sale or delivery date.
- A car finished late in a calendar year is usually an early next-model-year car.
- Bowling Green (1981-82) tags give a build week, never an exact day.
- The VIN sequence is production order, not a date, so it does not encode when the car was built.
Decode from a VIN instead
A VIN has no build date, but it tells us the model year and plant so the form above is set up correctly. Enter your full VIN and we’ll fill those in for you.
Engine stamp (advanced)
The engine pad stamp dates the engine, not the car (it was typically cast days to weeks before assembly), and only means something on a numbers-matching car. Format: plant letter + month/day + suffix.
How the C3 Corvette build date and birthday calculator works
People come to this page asking all sorts of things: how old is my Corvette, when was my C3 built, what’s the birthday of my Corvette. They almost always reach for the VIN first, and that’s the catch: the VIN tells you the model year, the assembly plant and where the car sat in the production run, but it never tells you the day it was built. The only place the factory wrote down a real date is the Fisher Body trim tag. Read that little code and you get your car’s birthday.
Step 1: Find your trim tag
- Open the driver’s door and look at the body where the door latches. That is the hinge pillar / “A-pillar” area just below the dash.
- You’re looking for a small aluminium plate that says BODY BY FISHER. It’s riveted on and packed with short codes.
- On the top line, off to the right, is a short group like H15 or C03B. That is the body build date.
- The line below carries the other two codes the tool reads: TR followed by the interior trim code, and the paint code sitting just before the word PAINT. On a 1972 car that could be TR 404 and 912: black leather in a Sunflower Yellow body.
Step 2: Read the code
There are two styles, depending on which plant built your car:
- St. Louis cars (1968-1981) use a letter then a day number, like H15. The letter is the month and the number is the day of the month, so you get an exact day. The twist: the letter doesn’t always mean the same month, because each model year has its own letter-to-month list (August is usually where the year starts), which is why the tool asks you for the year first.
- Bowling Green cars (1981-1982) use a letter, then a two-digit month, then a week letter, like C03B. Bowling Green stamped the week, not the day, so the best anyone can do here is narrow it to a build week.
Step 3: Check the tool by hand
Don’t just take our word for it. The math is simple enough to run yourself. Here’s a St. Louis example:
Say your 1968 tag reads H15.
Count the letters for a 1968 car: A = Aug 1967, B = Sep, C = Oct, D = Nov, E = Dec, F = Jan 1968, G = Feb, H = March. The 15 is the day.
So H15 = 15 March 1968, exactly what the tool returns.
Type it in above and you’ll get the same date, with the weekday spelled out. That’s the whole trick: the tool just carries the full letter list for every year (1968-1982) so you don’t have to. To double-check your own year against a printed chart, any published Corvette trim tag build date list is a good second opinion.
Step 4: Read the paint and trim codes
The build date is only a third of the tag. The other two codes tell you what the car looked like when it left the factory, which matters if yours has been repainted or retrimmed since, and both are on the line under the date.
- Paint code. Through 1973 the tag carries a plain three-digit number, 912 for Sunflower Yellow on a 1972 car, and that is exactly what the colour charts print. In 1974 the tag changed and the charts did not, which is why so many 1974 owners think their code is missing: the tag stamps a two-digit short form with a letter, 22L, while every chart including ours lists the master number 922 for that same Medium Blue. From 1975 the two-digit form is the official one, so the charts print 70 for Orange Flame and the tag reads 70L. That letter is the body colour marker; two-tone cars carry two codes side by side instead, U for the upper half and M or L for the lower, as on the 1978 Silver Anniversary 13U 07M. Type whichever form your tag shows: the decoder reads them all and tells you which one it matched.
- Trim code. Written after TR. Through 1974 it is three plain digits. From 1975 it carries a letter: V for vinyl, C for cloth, and an all-numeric code ending in 2 for leather. So on a 1975 car 19V and 192 are the same black in two materials.
Two traps worth knowing, because both look like errors when they are not. In 1977 and 1978 that C is not plain cloth, it is leather with cloth inserts. And a code prefix does not mean the same colour in every year: 19 is Black from 1975 to 1980 but Charcoal in 1981, after Black was dropped. The same applies to the older codes, where black leather is 402 in 1968-69, 403 in 1970-71 and 404 from 1972. Any code only means something once you have said which year, which is why the tool asks for the year first.
Say your 1972 tag reads TR 404 and 912.
That is a Sunflower Yellow car with a black leather interior, one of 1,543 built in that colour, and a pairing Chevrolet listed as recommended.
The tool checks that last part for you. Chevrolet published a chart of which interiors it recommended with which exterior colours, and the decoder looks your two codes up in it. A combination that is not on the chart is not proof of anything: cars were built to special order all through the C3 run. It is a reason to look a little harder at the rest of the documentation, nothing more. The full charts are on the paint codes by year and interior trim codes by year pages.
Step 5: See how rare that car was
Once the decoder knows the year and the paint code it can say how many cars left the factory that way, because Chevrolet recorded a colour split for most of the C3 years. Ask it about Medium Red on a 1977 and the answer is 4,057 cars out of the 49,213 built that year, a little over eight percent. Give it a VIN as well, in the box above, and it adds the engine, since the VIN names that from 1972 onward: an L82 in 1977 is 6,148 cars, one in eight.
When two of those figures are known the tool also multiplies them into an estimate of how many cars had both. Read that as an order of magnitude and nothing more. Chevrolet never published how many cars carried one colour and one engine at the same time, so the estimate assumes the two choices were made independently of each other, and buyers plainly did not order that way. Four years have no colour quantities on record at all, 1969, 1970, 1973 and 1974, so there the decoder says nothing about colour rather than inventing a number.
Common questions
Can I find my Corvette’s build date from the VIN alone?
No. The VIN gives the model year, the plant (S = St. Louis, 5 = Bowling Green) and the build sequence number, but not a date. Use the VIN to confirm the year and plant, then read the trim tag for the actual birthday. The box above will fill in the year and plant from a VIN for you.
What’s the difference between the build date and the “birthday”?
They’re the same thing here: the day (or week) the body was built at the factory. Just remember it’s the body build date; final assembly, shipping and the first sale all came later, sometimes by weeks or months.
What if my tag is missing or unreadable?
The engine pad stamp (under “Engine stamp” above) dates the engine, which is usually within a couple of weeks of the car if it’s the original engine. It’s a decent fallback, not a substitute. Your best bet for a paper trail is a GM build sheet or a Corvette history report keyed to your VIN.
Why does a late-1967 date show up for a 1968 car?
That’s normal. Corvette model years started in the late summer or autumn of the year before, so a car built in, say, October 1967 is an early 1968 model, not a leftover 1967. The tool spells out the calendar year so there’s no guessing.
Compiled from several Corvette build date references available online, plus the Corvette-C3.com VIN decoder.
Frequently asked questions
What is on a C3 Corvette trim tag?
The Fisher Body trim tag carries the style number, the body number, a TR code for the interior trim, a paint code for the exterior colour, and the build-date code. The decoder on this page reads all three of the last ones: the build date becomes a day or a build week, the paint code becomes the factory colour and the TR code the interior, and it also tells you whether Chevrolet recommended that colour over that interior. Full tables are on the C3 paint codes and C3 interior trim codes pages, year by year.
How do I decode a C3 Corvette paint code?
Pick the model year first, because the codes were reused. Through 1973 the paint code on the trim tag is three digits and the colour charts print the same number, so 912 on a 1972 car is Sunflower Yellow. 1974 is the year that confuses people: the tag switched to a two-digit short form with a letter, 22L, while the charts kept the master number 922 for that same Medium Blue, so the code on the car and the code in the book do not look alike. From 1975 the two-digit form is official, so a chart says 70 for Orange Flame and the tag says 70L. Two-tone cars carry two codes side by side, U for the upper half and M or L for the lower. The decoder accepts any of those forms and tells you which code it matched, along with the colour name, how many cars were built in it and what share of the year that was.
How many Corvettes were built in my colour?
For most model years the decoder answers that as soon as it reads the paint code: the colour name, how many cars were built in it, and what share of the year that was. Medium Red on a 1977, for example, is 4,057 cars out of 49,213. Add your VIN in the box on the page and it does the same for the engine, since a C3 VIN names that from 1972 onward. The figures come from the same factory ledgers as our C3 paint codes pages and the year by year specification pages. Chevrolet did not record a colour breakdown for 1969, 1970, 1973 and 1974, so anyone quoting a number for those four years is guessing.
What is the TR code on a Corvette trim tag?
TR stands for trim: it is the interior code, and it names both a colour and a material. Through 1974 it is three plain digits, for example 404 for black leather on a 1972 Corvette. From 1975 the code carries a letter, V for vinyl and C for cloth, while an all-numeric code ending in 2 is leather, so 19V and 192 are the same black in two materials. Two warnings: on 1977 and 1978 cars that C is leather with cloth inserts rather than plain cloth, and the same prefix is not the same colour in every year, since 19 is Black from 1975 to 1980 but Charcoal in 1981.
How is a C3 Corvette build date determined?
From the build code stamped on the body trim tag. This tool reads that code and converts it to the date the body was assembled.
Where is the trim tag on a C3 Corvette?
The trim tag is a small metal plate attached to the body. On a C3 it is on the driver side door hinge pillar, in the A pillar area. The calculator above explains how to read the build code stamped on it.
How exact is the build date?
For St. Louis built Corvettes the trim tag gives the exact assembly day. For Bowling Green cars, from 1981, the code narrows the build to a specific week.
Can I get my Corvette's build date from the VIN?
No. The VIN gives the model year, the assembly plant and the build sequence number, but not a date. Use the VIN to confirm the year and plant, then read the trim tag build code for the actual birthday.
Is the build date the same as the model year?
No. Corvette production for a given model year usually started in the autumn of the previous calendar year. A 1974 model, for example, could have been assembled in the autumn of 1973. The build date tells you when your specific car was made.
What is a Corvette birthday?
It is the day, or week, the car's body was built at the factory, taken from the trim tag. Final assembly, shipping and the first sale came later, so the build date is not the same as the delivery date.