Happy 50th b'day!!!....err maybe....Birth Certificate errors???

Got my birth certificate from the vw museum about a week ago. It lists the build date as July 8, 1961, which is today and would make my car officially 50 years old!!! However, this date doesn't really jive with the vin number records I've seen other places. Anybody else gotten a birth certificate for their car with a build date that doesn't add up?

According to Progressive Refinements (which is supposed to have been compiled from VW factory records showing each individual change over the years) the 1962 model year began on July 31, 1961 with vin number 4010995. PR also lists the very last vin number produced for each month, and the last beetle "built" on July 31, 1961 was 4020589. My car falls between these two numbers which would indicate is was built on July 31 rather than July 8.

Just confusing I'm out of town today, and can't really celebrate by taking the car out for a spin, so I think I'm just going to settle on the July 31 date so I can give the car a nice drive in honor of its half century milestone.

Of course those numbers from PR would mean they produced almost 10000 cars on that day which is a bit excessive. According to smallwonder I think they were only doing around 4500 a day around then.

Still it's interesting.