Every car and light truck built for the U.S. market since the 1981 model year carries a 17-character Vehicle Identification Number, or VIN. It looks like a random string, but each position has a job. Once you know the layout you can confirm a car's country of origin, manufacturer and model year at a glance, and spot a VIN that has been tampered with.
Where to find the VIN
Check at least two of these places and make sure they match:
- The dashboard, on the driver's side, visible through the bottom of the windshield.
- The driver's door jamb, on the sticker that also lists tire pressures and weight ratings.
- The title and registration, plus the owner's insurance card.
- The engine bay or frame on many vehicles, though the location varies by manufacturer.
The three sections of a VIN
A VIN is split into three groups: the World Manufacturer Identifier (positions 1 to 3), the Vehicle Descriptor Section (4 to 8) and the Vehicle Identifier Section (10 to 17). Position 9 sits in the middle as a security check.
The letters I, O and Q are never used anywhere in a modern VIN, because they are too easy to confuse with the numbers 1 and 0. If someone hands you a VIN containing one of them, it has been copied down wrong.
Positions 1–3: who built it
The first character usually tells you the country or region where the vehicle was assembled:
- 1, 4 or 5: United States
- 2: Canada
- 3: Mexico
- J: Japan
- K: South Korea
- W: Germany
- S: United Kingdom
- L: China
The second and third characters identify the manufacturer and, often, the division or vehicle type. Together, the first three characters form a code that is assigned to one manufacturer.
Positions 4–8: what it is
The Vehicle Descriptor Section describes the vehicle itself. Each manufacturer decides how to use these five positions, but they typically encode the model line, body style, engine, restraint system and, for trucks, the gross vehicle weight rating. This is the part a VIN decoder translates into a readable build sheet.
Position 9: the check digit
The ninth character is calculated from the other sixteen using a fixed formula. Each character is converted to a number, multiplied by a weight based on its position, and the total is divided by 11. The remainder, from 0 to 9 or X for 10, becomes the check digit.
That means a single mistyped character almost always produces a VIN that fails the check. It is also why a VIN someone has altered by hand often doesn't add up. When you run a VIN through our VIN check, the check digit is verified before anything else.
Position 10: the model year
The tenth character is the model year. The code runs through a 30-year cycle using letters and digits, skipping I, O, Q, U, Z and the number 0:
- A = 1980 or 2010, B = 1981 or 2011, C = 1982 or 2012, and so on
- 1 through 9 = 2001 through 2009
- L = 2020, M = 2021, N = 2022, P = 2023, R = 2024, S = 2025, T = 2026
Because letters repeat every 30 years, you need context to tell a 1990 from a 2020. For most cars and light trucks sold in North America, the seventh character helps: a number there points to the 1980–2009 cycle, and a letter points to 2010 onward.
Position 11: the assembly plant
The eleventh character identifies the factory where the vehicle was built. Codes are specific to each manufacturer, so a decoder is the easiest way to translate them.
Positions 12–17: the serial number
The last six characters are the production sequence number that makes the VIN unique. Two otherwise identical cars from the same plant and year will differ here.
What a VIN can and can't tell you
Decoding a VIN tells you how a vehicle left the factory: make, model, year, engine, body style and where it was built. It does not tell you what has happened since. Title brands, total-loss and salvage records, odometer readings and open safety recalls are all tied to the VIN in separate databases, and those records are what a vehicle history report pulls together.
Before you buy, decode the VIN to confirm the car is what the seller says it is, then check its history to learn what the car has been through.
