Content on this page provided by, and used with permission of Panasonic Bicycles Virtual Museum. Other sources used “Japanese Steel” by William Bevington and Scott Ryder.
First of all, serial numbers on most bikes are found on either the bottom bracket or head tube. With most bicycle serial numbers, the first number or letter is important and should be looked into first.
In the case of Panasonic bikes, the first number designates the year,
the letter indicates the month the bike was manufactured and the rest of the numbers are the sequential build number.
Example: 6J03254 This would be a 1986 model built in October and the 3,254 bike built. See more examples below.
In some cases, the date code does not always correlate with the model year. Panasonic, as well as other brands would increase their inventory late in the year for next years models. So, a serial number that may indicate an ’84 model could have been sold in ’85.
Another method of checking the year is to look for the dates on the original components.
Like most Asian imports of that time including Panasonic, the serial number structure changed due to various reasons. For some brands, different manufacturers were used to build the bikes so they would use their serial number system.
As stated above, the serial numbers could have been on the head tube or the bottom bracket. Between the ’85 to mid 90’s. Some of the higher end models like the 1986 Team America have the serial number on the bottom bracket.
Earlier models would use the rear dropouts like some of the Schwinn models. There could also be some older Panasonics using the head badge as a place for a 4 digit code. It’s believed that the first 3 digits represent the day of the year and the 4th digit representing the year.
There will be some unique serial numbers due to where the bikes were exported and sold. There are some examples out there where the serial numbers were off by 2 to 3 years depending on if they were sold in the US or Europe.
A = January G = July
B = February H = August
C = March I = September
D = April J = October
E = May K = November
F = Jun3 L = December
EXAMPLES
1982 Professional 7000 2B15380
2 = The build year 1982
B = Build month – February
15380 = The build number
1985 Team Europe 5D08078
5 = The build year 1985
D = Build Month – April
08078 = The build number
1990 PR 6000 0D03823
0 = The build year
D = Build Month – April
03823 = The build number