I have been trying for some time now to keep up with VIN statistics. I started a few years back when I began maintaining the VIN database, which tracks all sorts of identifying information about our cars. One thing I forgot (in the beginning) was to track how many times a particular VIN was looked-up, or “clicked on”. I finally sobered up and installed a counter on our “Find My Vin” web page, and now it has been about 1 year since beginning counting those page hits.
In the beginning I purposely did not mention installing the counter to anyone, or post about it on any DeLorean thread. I thought a premature mention would cause unnatural skewing of the counts by people purposely clicking on their own VIN so to run-up the count. So I stealthily installed the counter and displayed the results on our statistics web page (it wasn’t getting a lot of hits).
So, without further adieu, below are the results of the top-10 most clicked on VINs, from our database:
I watched the counts closely as they climbed throughout the year. I tested using my own VIN, so in the first week my car was unfairly the top-researched VIN, but I knew this would repair itself naturally (and it did). From then on, I took great care not to skew the counts myself, being the only one who knew of this secret plot. I believed Pilot 20 would win hands-down, and remain at the top of the list. It did start out the highest, but then 880, 1759 and 513 began to rise and gave chase. Now, in the last six months leading up to this announcement, Pilot 20 has fell to #3, and 513 took a commanding lead, and has consistently been #1 since, with 880 being 2nd. Of course I understood why Pilot 20 was at or near the top, but I didn’t know why 513 and 880 were/are so popular. And behind Pilot 20 (#s4-10), these cars have consistently been neck-and-neck, but with all remaining behind 513, 880 and 20. Most all the other VINs are well below 100 hits.
Anyone have any thoughts or theories about why some VINs are more popular than others (aside from the obvious, of course)?
Some “obvious” reasons to exclude are: Barn finds, pilots, test/mules, gold, missing, conversions, BTTF, wrecked, etc. Other than those reasons….what’s up with that?
It's now been about a year since my last post regarding this, and two years since tracking the number of VIN "look-ups". Here are the results of the 2nd year of tracking (with comparison to 1st year).
Still the mystery persists: Why is 513 so popular? It pulled way ahead of all others, and retains a commanding lead. Pilot 20 regained it's prized 2nd place position (but why isn't it first?). 1759 remains strong consistently. 551 is the new rising star. And although not close to the top, 614 gets an honorable mention as well for remaining in the top 10.
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