i have purchased a 54 beetle and am interested in finding out its build number. would anyone know of a website i can go too to find out. cheers...bob

What is the chassis number?

chassis number is 1525272
bob

if itsa 54 then it must be 1 - 525272 is that right????

54s have to have a dash between the 1 and the main number

1954-model cars had chassis numbers between 1-575416 and 1-781884. As Dave says, yours should have the '1-' at the start. If so, that makes it slightly earlier - around October 1953.

BUT - if there is no '-' in the number, then that means yours is the 1,525,272nd built, which puts it at around April 1957. In that case it could have been assembled in Melbourne up to six months after this.

See http://www.clubvw.org.au/vwchassis 

For a VW that old, you might want to order a 'birth certificate' from the Wolfsburg factory, which costs 50 Euro. Here is the link: http://automuseum.volkswagen.de/index.php?id=12&L=1  (Note this may not work for Australian-made VWs, especially 1959-68).