It's only important if the owner tries to sell it as a "rare" model and asking more money for it.
Not always the case. My dad owned many prototype cars. Even the first Mustang was accidentally sold to the public. Vin #1. It took Ford several years to get it back. The buyer wouldn't part with it. After a few years, he finally agreed, and Ford gave him a new Mustang with any and all options he wanted for it. It now sits in the Henry Ford Museum. I'm sure they built at least a few dozen in the US for testing and engineering. Sometimes they escape into the wild. But unless the VIN starts with 1, it's not.
That was sixty years ago. It’s virtually impossible for a current car manufacturer to let a prototype car escape. The liability is too high.
Many times they are donated to colleges, for their auto shops. I've towed them to my local college before. They use them for training. Not all are crushed.
The worst aspect of social media is the people who want to be set apart from the crowd so bad, that they'll either fabricate a story to make themselves stand out, or are duped into thinking they have a rarity by an unscrupulous person.A guy in a fairly large Facebook group has a Rouge Plant decal on his truck and claims a few Mavericks were built there very early in MY22. I immediately asked for his VIN and don't expect an answer.
Has anyone ever heard of this? I'm 99.99% certain the sticker was bought online and applied, whether it was the current owner or before he bought it and he actually believes the story.
The difference between lying and just being wrong sometimes just takes a lack of awareness that you're wrong. And it's not Rogue, it's Rouge as in a shade of the color red, or in this case, the Rouge River in Michigan.
Seems plausible. Let's rip out all the F-150 equipment (the most profitable line) put in equipment to build Mavericks (Fords smallest margin vehicle) build a few Mavericks and then tear that all out again and put the F-150 line back in service. Yep, definitely happened.
