How to Read a VIN Number: All 17 Characters Explained

Every car built for the North American market since the 1981 model year carries a 17-character Vehicle Identification Number. It is not a random serial number — it is a structured code, and once you know where the boundaries fall you can read the manufacturer, the assembly plant, the body style and the model year straight off the plate.

This guide walks through all 17 positions in order.

The three sections of a VIN

A VIN is defined by ISO 3779 and splits into three blocks:

Take 1HGCM82633A004352 as a worked example. 1HG is the WMI, CM8263 is the VDS, and 3A004352 is the VIS.

Positions 1–3: who built it and where

Position 1 — country of assembly. 1, 4 and 5 mean the United States, 2 Canada, 3 Mexico, J Japan, K South Korea, L China, S the United Kingdom, W Germany, and Y Sweden or Finland.

Position 2 — manufacturer. Read together with position 1: 1H is Honda, 1G General Motors, 1F Ford, WB BMW, WD Mercedes-Benz.

Position 3 — vehicle type or manufacturing division. This distinguishes a passenger car from a truck, an MPV or an incomplete chassis. In our example 1HG identifies a Honda passenger car.

A manufacturer producing fewer than 1,000 vehicles a year gets a WMI ending in 9, and characters 12–14 then act as a second manufacturer identifier.

Positions 4–8: what the vehicle actually is

This is the descriptive core, and it is the one part of the VIN that is not standardised across the industry. Each manufacturer defines its own coding for:

• Model line and series
• Body style — sedan, coupe, hatchback, wagon, pickup cab configuration
• Engine family and displacement
• Transmission type
• Restraint system (which airbags and belt pretensioners are fitted)
• Trim or grade level

Because the scheme is manufacturer-specific, reading these five characters by eye requires the maker's own reference table. This is where a VIN decoder does the work for you — it holds the per-manufacturer maps and returns the resolved specifications and features rather than raw codes.

Position 9: the check digit

Position 9 tells you nothing about the car. It is a checksum that validates the other 16 characters, and it is why a typo in a VIN is almost always caught immediately.

The calculation works like this:

1. Convert every letter to a number using a fixed transliteration table (A=1, B=2, … J=1, K=2, … S=2, T=3, …).
2. Multiply each of the 17 positions by its assigned weight: 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 10, 0, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2.
3. Sum the products and take the remainder modulo 11.
4. A remainder of 0–9 is the check digit; a remainder of 10 is written as X.

If the digit in position 9 does not match the computed value, the VIN is either mistranscribed or fabricated. Treat a failed checksum on a listing as a reason to walk away.

Position 10: the model year

Position 10 encodes the model year on a repeating 30-year cycle. The letters I, O, Q, U and Z are skipped, as is the digit 0:

Because the cycle repeats, A could mean 1980 or 2010. The tiebreaker is position 7: since the 2010 model year, position 7 is always a letter on passenger vehicles, and on 1980–2009 vehicles it is a digit.

Note that the model year is not the calendar year of manufacture. A 2026 model year car may well have rolled off the line in mid-2025.

Position 11: the assembly plant

A single manufacturer-specific character identifying the factory. Two otherwise identical cars from different plants can have different recall exposure, which is why the plant code matters when you check open safety recalls.

Positions 12–17: the production sequence

The serial number of that particular vehicle as it came down the line — usually sequential, usually starting at 000001 or 100001 for a model year. On low-volume manufacturers, positions 12–14 instead carry the extended manufacturer identifier and only 15–17 are sequential.

In 1HGCM82633A004352, the sequence is 004352: the 4,352nd unit of that run.

What a VIN cannot tell you

Decoding a VIN gives you the vehicle as it left the factory. It does not tell you what happened afterwards. The VIN is the key to that history, not the history itself. To find out about:

• Reported accidents and structural damage
• Salvage, flood, lemon or rebuilt title brands
• Odometer readings recorded at each title transfer
• Number of previous owners and states of registration
• Open, unrepaired safety recalls

…you need to look the VIN up against title, insurance and government databases. That is what a full vehicle history report does.

Reading a VIN quickly: a checklist

1. Confirm it is exactly 17 characters, with no I, O or Q.
2. Check position 1 for the country and positions 1–3 for the manufacturer.
3. Look at position 7 — letter means 2010 or later, digit means 2009 or earlier.
4. Read position 10 for the model year, using step 3 to resolve the cycle.
5. Validate the check digit in position 9.
6. Run the full VIN through a decoder for the manufacturer-specific positions 4–8.

If you are not sure you have transcribed it correctly, find it in more than one place on the vehicle — our guide on where to find the VIN on your car lists eight locations, and a mismatch between any two of them is a serious warning sign.

Decode your VIN

Enter any 17-character VIN on the VehicleInforCheck home page to get the decoded specifications plus title, mileage and recall history in one report.