First of all I want to say this project I’m working on wouldn’t be half of what it is today without the computer skills and detective work of those who contributed to the “How many ITRs were sold in the USDM?” thread over there. Specifically Andy T who did a tremendous amount of computer work and ran all the carfaxes. He sent to me the holy grail…. all 3,850 US ITR VINs and their color, location and title status as of April 2006. This has been such a huge help with determining badge pattern; it’s hard to put into words. Dave ROR, Ken (nsxtasy), and many others were also very involved in the research and computer work needed to compile the basic information.
What I’m doing.
Pretty basically, I’m trying to gather and archive as much known information about our caRs as possible before it’s lost forever. This started out as simply matching the VIN to a badge # in an Excel sheet but quickly evolved into noting other statistics such as mileage, owners, locations, mods, dates of any noteworthy events…and now pictures. Research.
The second part of course is trying to help owners determine their badge #. This can be pretty tricky. What helps is having more and more known VIN/badge combos to narrow down a range and then look deeper within those badges. Generally there are patterns of distributions of the badges. One group of badges tend to be given to one batch of ITRs off the assembly line. For example, if Honda made a run of say 10 ITRs, with VINs ending 2600-2609, then their badges almost always would be in the same group of 10… like #54-63. There have been a lot of cases where VIN goes up by 1 digit, badge goes up by 1… perfectly linear. Other times it’s close to linear but flip-flopped at some points. Like 309 should have been 308 and 308 should have been 309 if you kept the VINs linear. Yes, that’s the case with mine
In fewer cases, but especially the 2001s, the badges seem distributed completely randomly, sadly a pattern may never be found for those. The first 120 of the 2001s show this. With as many VIN/badge combos as I have in that range, there is no pattern. VIN ending 0001 could be #96 and VIN 0002 could be #33.Why am I doing this?
Well, I enjoy it for one. It’s actually fun. J I’ve always liked playing with numbers and trying to identify any patterns to be able to make predictions. I enjoy seeing ITRs that Acura sold and how they’ve lived their lives so far…. especially when I was still just a dReamer.
I also realize how important it is that this be done now as these cars are still relatively young and original or second owners are still around. Tragically, when a caR is stripped or wrecked and junked, that current owner and whoever owned it prior are the last people to ever know the badge for that R. They often move on to other fun cars and may never surface again in our community. Imagine trying to find a lost badge # or previous owners 10 or 20 years from now. We the community are the only ones who will be able to preserve this information. No one else is going to do it for us. I’m certainly not holding my breath for Honda to tell us, “oh yeah, we kept a list.”What can you do?
Participate.
Help out however you can. If you’re comfortable PMing me your VIN, I thank you and promise you I will keep your info confidential and offline. Even if you sold or lost your R years ago, find heR VIN. Also any friends of yours who've been through the owneRship, ask them! To everyone who has already done this, thank you thank you thank you thank you!!! Even if nothing ever happens to your R or you own it for the the next 50 years, this known VIN/badge combo will definitely help someone else find the badge for their caR. I realize some people could care less about badges. Plenty of guys have owned their caRs for years and never looked or can’t remember the #. Well, if you still have the R or know where it is, go out and look at it and let me know then you can forget it again JAt this time, I only backup my Registry with Jim Walker (Walker111) and Andy T. I do this so if something were to happen to my home or myself, this information will not be lost. Haha, first time in my life I had to think about passing something on
Oh yeah, who wants 309??Other ways to help are just passing along VINs and/or badges to me as you come across them, especially on your local forums. I try to keep an eye on the major stuffs (ebay, autotrader, cars.com, ITRCA, etc) but I won’t come across an R that’s just mentioned locally. Even if the caR is alive and well and not for sale, tell me that much. Locations help, just city and state is all I’m looking for. Quite a few guys are already helping me this way and I sincerely appreciate it!
Please use PM to contact me with any sensitive information.
Well, I think that about covers it…
but im just wondering this.
About 62k miles on her.