VIN decoder
Paste a 17-character VIN. The structure is decoded in your browser; the full specification comes from NHTSA’s public database when the vehicle was sold in the US.
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How a VIN is put together
Every VIN has been 17 characters since 1981, split into three parts that answer three different questions.
1 H G C M 8 2 6 3 3 A 0 0 4 3 5 2 └─┬─┘ └──┬──┘ │ │ │ └────┬────┘ │ │ │ │ │ └── serial number (12–17) │ │ │ │ └───────── assembly plant (11) │ │ │ └─────────── model year (10) │ │ └───────────── check digit (9) │ └────────────────── model descriptor (4–8) └───────────────────────── manufacturer / WMI (1–3)
The check digit is the interesting one. Each character is transliterated to a number, multiplied by a fixed positional weight, summed, and reduced modulo 11 — a remainder of 10 is written as X. Change any single character and the sum almost always stops matching, which is what makes transcription errors visible.
Questions
›What does each part of a VIN mean?
Characters 1–3 are the World Manufacturer Identifier: who built it and where. Characters 4–8 are the Vehicle Descriptor Section, describing model, body and engine. Character 9 is a check digit. Character 10 is the model year, 11 is the assembly plant, and 12–17 are the serial number.
›Why do VINs never contain I, O or Q?
They are too easily confused with the digits 1 and 0. The VIN alphabet deliberately excludes all three, so any VIN containing one has been mistranscribed.
›What is the check digit and can my VIN fail it?
Character 9 is computed from the other sixteen using a weighted sum modulo 11. It catches transcription errors. It is mandatory in North America, but manufacturers elsewhere are not required to use it, so a European or Asian VIN that fails the check is usually still genuine.
›How do I read the model year from a VIN?
Character 10 encodes it on a 30-year cycle, so each code means two possible years — B is both 1981 and 2011. On North American VINs, character 7 resolves it: a digit means the earlier year, a letter means the later one.
›Does this show mileage, accidents or ownership?
No. Those come from title and insurance records held by commercial history providers, not from the VIN itself. This tool decodes what the number structurally encodes, plus the free NHTSA specification.
›Why does NHTSA have no record of my vehicle?
The vPIC database covers vehicles built for sale in the United States. Imports, grey-market cars and models never sold in the US are frequently absent, even though the structural decode still works.