So, I ran my VIN through the decoder for grins to determine exactly what options it had and it came back with a rarity of 2. My question is does that really mean anything, or do most of you come up with similar findings? This is a recent purchase and I'm the 2nd owner so I have limited history on the car beyond carfax and what I was told by the previous owner.

I'm assuming that the rarity number and $5 might get me a cup of coffee at Star Bucks.

I did a quick search on the forum and didn't really find an answer, but if this question has been kicked around before I apologize in advance.

 

GM does not keep statistics on the number of cars with the same set of options, so any information of that kind that you find is not likely to be very accurate.

 

i think the option codes are also inside glove box (it is for mine).

some interesting counts...
http://corvetteactioncenter.com/spec.../2005prod.html

codes...
http://corvetteactioncenter.com/spec.../2005rpos.html

 

What decoder are you talking about?

 

does anyone know where i can find a list of what the codes are that are on my sticker in my glove box?

 

these?
http://corvetteactioncenter.com/spec.../2006rpos.html

 

I used http://www.compnine.com/vid.php. I found several references to it on the forum, but there are many others if you google.

 

compnine.com is back up and running, just plug in your vin...

 

Ye, that's what I used.

 

Thats great news/

Mine is 1 0f 1 Lol! Likely because of this rare option; ZR6 SHOW VEHICLE - 1 of 25

 

Compnine is a joke. They are building a database on the backs of those who enter their VIN and profiting from it. They have no information of their own. They take your VIN, use it to run through the GM VIS (they only have a fraction of the cars on the road, so pretty much every car entered is a "rare" one of one or one of two) and then sell a service with a monthly subscription to smaller dealerships that don't have a brand affiliation. Any GM dealership will provide the same information for free and several here on the forum will even email it to you. The rarity part is the hook that gets so many owners excited and it's total garbage. Even GM doesn't keep a database to that level of detail to say how many of each with what options were produced.

 

Yes, not Ye.

 

Go to the Bowling Green assembly plant web site:

http://www.bowlinggreenassemblyplant.com/

and then go to Plant Info, then Option Penitration-then click on your year to see the total options for your year.

 

Unless it has changed, the default is to include all options which includes week of manufacture. So if it came back with 2 that means they think there was another identical car made the same week. Remove the week of the build and it gets closer but it still just a guess.

BTW, if it came back 2 with the default then you have a VERY common car. Almost everyone comes back with 1 using the default options to include list.

 

Ouch.

I can understand how you'd come to that conclusion, but that's not at all how it works. It's not built on the back of people that run their VIN, it runs off a static database of about 107 million GM vehicles. You'll notice a total count of the model/year matches in the database, such as "Found 289,611 vehicles matching your year and model in our database." That's a live count of the vehicles actually in the database. It doesn't need you to put in a VIN and it covers quite a bit more than GM.

The rarity for each RPO down the right side of the results is the count of that RPO within the same year/model. If the total found vehicles matches or is really close to the production run for the year then that option count is very accurate. Use that.

The rarity in the middle has a big bold announcement telling you why it says something silly like only 1 of a given vehicle was made. People tend to miss that notice. I actually made it red and flashing for a little while but still got the same results, and it looked awful.

In summary, for that section it uses *all* of the RPO codes listed to see how many have *exactly* those same options. Sometimes it can be somewhat useful but many times you'll notice useless RPO codes like "LABEL,NOTICE TO BUYER". Nobody cares about that code, it doesn't really make your car any rarer, but there's no way to take it out for the full comparison. Suddenly your common "red with nothing" vehicle is one of a kind.

That's why a more accurate rarity calculator was built that would allow you to select only the options that matter most and to get a count on only that combination. It was up for about 2 years but it's being rebuilt right now. Surprisingly even with a massive link to it few people bothered to use it and relied on the rarity calculation on the page, even when less than 2 lines below it is an explanation on why you shouldn't get all excited about the results. Honestly I'm not a huge fan of that section and it was even taken down for a while. Boy the emails I got over that move.....

A bit of a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation with it but maybe once the selective rarity calculator is done I'll flat out delete that section and force you to select the RPO codes you want to compare. Might make for a few less "lol 1 of 1" jokes (albeit justified), but I think it'll be better overall.

Jason
Comp Nine

 

I found Compnine to be an instrumental tool while shopping for my current car. I found the results to be very accurate and it saved me tons of time by simply pluggin in VIN's, lots of them!

Glad to see its back up and running. I would recommend this tool to anyone shopping for a Vette.

 

Jason,

I would like to thank you for taking the time to respond in the face of a bit of an attack on my part. I have to tell you that I will remain skeptical as Frankly, I'm not sure how such a "database" would have come to exhist unless it was tapping in to the GMVIS and similar systems from other manufacturers which would be a questionable practice in light of the pay for play nature of your new service. Regardless, your RPO information can prove usefull to someone searching for a new (or new to them) car. On the rarity bit, well, we've covered how I feel about that....particularly since we as Corvette owners tend to get all geeked out about such things and I see a very dim future with a lot of "only 1 of 2" for sale and aution listings.

Paul

 

I have no affiliation with CompNine but I've been in the IT business for more than 25 years and the service that CompNine is providing isn't rocket science or magic. CompNine has a database of VIN's that lists every option that was installed on that car. They probably get this information directly from the manufacturers. The only magic is how they analyse the data. You say that GM doesn't know how unique a car is with respect to the RPO's on the car, but that simply isn't true!! GMVIS just doesn't allow a someone to do that type of query of the data.

 

We're just going to have to agree to disagree on the quote in bold.

The reality is, GM is a car manufacturer, not a collector car archive. GM cares about how many cars they produce, this is true. They care about how many of what options they sell, this is also true. What they don't care, nor track outside of 6 months from build is how many of what car had what options, it is irrelevant data to them.

Not knowing how other manufacturers do things, I can only talk to GM. In the case of said database, the only way I know that anyone (dealer or otherwise) can get a cars RPO information from a VIN is via the GMVIS. I know originally that the first Compnine VIN decoder was on a website for a GM parts dealer (think like GMPartshouse, Partstaxi or GMPartsdirect) which would give them access to the VIS. Use of the VIS in this fashion is against GM's intent for the system. Based on my thought process, this is where I have a problem.

 

Just glad to have Compnine back in action, always good to have another resource!