Thanks for posting a complete reply.
Here is my take and again its just my opinion..... remember my opinion so go with that.
The normal F-s are semi simple and basic, most have the door tag within a few days of the tag date. I place high value on the MDH portion of the fed door sticker as it was/is required to be placed on the car at the time of completion. We can only hope this was done at a consistent time with all. And the ones for the kits reflect added build time of some over 5 weeks.
I like the dictionary term commonality... the state of sharing features or attributes.
So I try to look at things we can find on each car. If nothing else the vin, then the fender tag and then the MDH on the fed door tag in hopes things were done consistently.
So say we have two cars, we look at the vins, they are in sequence in this case lets use the late 7/17 batch and a couple of the higher end of the vins, the 928 929 cars as they are both 7/17 and have equally order numbers in sequence.
So with these alone and nothing else one would think 928 earlier then the 929 car later. Although these two cars show on the door stickers the same completion date (not 7/17) and the 929 later in hour. So to me just going by vin if its all we had was clearly the 929 car built later. Per the door the 929 car is later. Knowing the normal F-s even the A57/A66 non T cars having the dated MDH within the normal few days of each other and the kits with some five weeks or less from the tags date.
So for the people who just go by vins and dont care to look further they are closer to being numerically correct then most think at least from the info I have. Now for the ones who have say semi equal cars like the two tags above want to go further the MDH at least to me tells alot if all things are equal and again we can only hope most are. So what if the MDH on the higher vin showed it was built before the lower? To me its about the criteria ones use and what most accept.
927,926,925 are all about the same cars. But now these two here both in the 7/17 group.. all these four show completed in a five week span (per the door sticker) but we know by the vins being so close if they were normal line cars the SPD difference to MDH date would be very very close vs 5 weeks apart. So on these this is why for me the MDH is important by what it reflects in the timeline of the lits and how it is very different then std. F-s. This is simply going by things we can find on each car... the more vins, tags, door stickers in the picture the easier the pattern is seen.
I know there are much smaller factors that could be included but are they easily found with each car to make the determination based on equal info. So for me I can only go on what we have on hand that cars have, all have the vin, most the FT and a good many the door sticker.
The base kits were much alike as most know, ac, non ac.... and the only real kicker is the seat/console cars. Take them away and the kits seem to be no more then simple E58 coupes two tone paint break cars. Looking at non kit paint break cars... I use paint break from the description on the decals used like below and have noticed common paint break cars dont have any more lag time on the MDH part then normal single color F-s and that supports the MDH part at completion. Ive a few pics of some masking going on and wow, we truly do better today as its just a few workers with roles of tape and paper in a hurry.
I know of at least two export kits and for some reason Canada dont seem to be considered export. Not sure about the early mopars with the basic door stickers but the Fs and others of the mid 70s share a good bit of info. At a glance a export car tells it on the door sticker, maybe for the ease of shipping and paperwork to id them? not sure but there is below and on every international export car.
Then the simple obvious "Built for Export" sticker on the body just below the top drivers side door hinge. But add on the many fonts for the tags, even different fonts on tags for cars built the same day, easy to explain though to the many fonts on the Fed door stickers.
In trying to get the font right on one of my cars a 76 with the maker of them in an odd way I found that in late of Dec 75 they change the basic form by one letter so I ended up with 3 but only one correct to match my old door tag pic. Here are two of the possible fonts look at the 3,5,9, ect.. and look at the upper left top corner MFG vs MFD which I found then further researched by helping a friend with a restored F but when his was done the door tag was correct but wrong in many ways in the basic form. No ones fault as it was good for the time period, ecs does a really good job on these.
The center one now being right for my car and on it now. The great thing about ECS is with a pic they can put the right font and if the type is not perfect they can match that as well so things dont look overly correct/perfect.
Things have not changed much.
My main focus is the 76 77 cars but I got all this semi decent info on the kits and sc cars so I try to keep up.
Id love to post a to post more in the open but id say 30% or better of the info comes from owners and the only way I get it is I agree to never post there info on the open web, some dont mind, some really do. So many bots, scrapers, apps to collect links and picks from websites are so common then things end up on vague websites like allpar for example and many more generic ones so whats one to do?
So even trying to keep it simple at times dont seem simple. But as far as first/last on the kits, is it ever really going to make a difference anyways other then the cool factor? Even with the most rare high dollar mopars how much significance is placed in a monetary on first vs last vs middle run?
But anyway imo the more we can kick topics around and get different opinions and views and I always hope factual info like FT, door tags, ect that can all add to the big picture is how we can get things as accurate as possible and even then there will be the one odd one that pops up that makes no sense of and can not be explained but most can.
Im sure ive 100 things wrong here but the coffee is wearing off so im fizzeled out for now. Its even hard for me to read this over and I wrote it.... BLAH!