<RANT ON>
American Honda exists in its own little world, and I have long ago learned to ignore them. In addition to the RC51 debacle you mentioned (one of my pet hates, that), if you take the American Honda Model ID Guide seriously, the suffix "L" in a Model Designation relates to a California model: VFR750FL '93, for example. Sorry, but that is only in the 'States, not in the ROW. The ROW uses letter suffixes (and number suffixes) to indicate the Model Year: VFR750FP, for example, and "Area Codes" are reflected in the Model designation. In addition to that, American Honda often uses different names for the models sold there, sowing needless confusion, and as we all know, many Honda models were never sold there and so do not exist as far as the American Honda "Motorcycle Identification Guide" is concerned. Moreover, I have never seen anyone (not Honda Motor Co., Ltd. in Japan or any other regional Honda distributor) use the "Model Designation Primary/Secondary" nomenclature favoured by American Honda. The Honda Parts Catalogues published by Honda Motor Co., Ltd. for use in the ROW simply say "Model".
<RANT OFF>
The VDS and VDC terms are specified by the VIN system adopted by the US federal government, not Honda. (The VDC for the RC213V-S is SC75A, btw, the character in the "A" position being the principal way in which Honda incorporates the intended market of each bike. These can change each Model Year, so while US models always used to be "0" or "1" (for 49-state and California, respectively), in Europe the designation for bikes originally intended for Germany can be "A" one year and "D" the next.) Whatever you want to call this "code", it is applied consistently throughout the world (even in the USA), which is why I use it--and not American Honda's quirky terms--in my own writing and documentation. Every Honda aficionado in the world knows what an "RC36" is (or could if they wanted to), even if they speak a different language and their local Honda distributor has inflicted a silly marketing name on the bike: it is a universal language ("Esperhonda"?) :wacko:
I am intrigued by the RC1000VSG appearing on the crate label, though. You are calling it the Secondary Model Designation, but this bike was not destined for the US market, and I doubt that is the Honda Japan term. It is possibly the same string of characters that appears on the barcode label on the rear mudguard of the bike, which I have never seen explained anywhere. For example, my Japan-spec RVF400RT has "RV4001W" on its barcode sticker, and the ones on my other Japanese-market bikes (MC22, NC29, NC30) all have similarly puzzling character strings that do not (exactly) correspond to any other name, code or designation I know of. I would love to figure this bit out, but it would probably require my learning Japanese--a bit late in the day for that, I'm afraid!
Ciao,