Just looked at a copy of the window sticker for my 2007 Coupe. You'll see on the bottom of the 1st page that the Port of Entry was listed as Baltimore, MD. This could also be the Final Assembly Point. It looked like it was an either/or identifier.

On the 2nd page of the window sticker, it clearly states that the Final Assembly Point was Osnabrueck, Germany. And look at the parts content from USA/Canadian sources! Zippo!!! A car doesn't get any more foreign that that over here!

So it looks like DaimlerChrysler may have used the Port of Entry identifier as the USA designation to start the VIN's off with "1". Add to that the info in an earlier post that the Service Manual shows the VIN decoding for Country of Origin as DaimlerChrysler Corporation, which was the USA company. Fed's don't really know the difference between a country and a Corporation anyway! Everybody in their right mind knows our government is run by idiots!

Anyway, we all know the cars were assembled in Europe. And the Fed's could have been "persuaded" by DaimlerChrysler back then to let them designate the cars as a USA product. Probably had tax benefit implications, etc.

And add to this that quite a few 2008 XFires are really 2007 models that DaimlerChrysler (might have been just Chrysler since I don't recall the exact date of the separation) paid the Fed's to re-badge since they had so many left over unsold both at the plant in Germany & on the docks in USA. So with enough "persuasion", just about anything can be accomplished within our Federal Government.

Go Figure!