GUIDE
What a VIN's 17 digits mean.
A VIN isn't random. Every position encodes something — country, maker, engine, model year, plant, and a unique serial. Here's the map.
Since 1981, every car sold in the US has a 17-character Vehicle Identification Number set by a global standard. The letters I, O, and Q are never used, so they can't be confused with 1 and 0. Read left to right, it breaks into six parts:
World Manufacturer Identifier (WMI)
Who built the car and where. Position 1 is the country: 1, 4, and 5 are the USA, 2 is Canada, 3 is Mexico, J is Japan, K is Korea, W is Germany. Positions 2–3 identify the maker.
Vehicle Descriptor Section (VDS)
The car itself — model, body style, engine, transmission, and restraint system. This is what a decoder turns into "2017 Honda CR-V EX, 1.5L turbo."
Check digit
A single digit (0–9 or X) calculated from all the others. It exists to catch typos and tampering: change one character and the math no longer adds up. A real decoder rejects a VIN whose check digit is wrong.
Model year
One character for the year: E=2014, F=2015, G=2016, H=2017, J=2018, K=2019, L=2020, M=2021, N=2022, P=2023, R=2024, S=2025. (The letters skip around on a 30-year cycle.)
Assembly plant
The specific factory that assembled the vehicle. Each manufacturer maps its own plant codes.
Production serial number
The unique sequence number for that exact unit coming off the line. This is what makes every VIN one-of-a-kind.
WHY IT MATTERS WHEN BUYING
The VIN is the car's real identity.
A seller can write anything in a listing. The VIN can't be fudged — decode it and you get the year, make, model, and engine straight from the federal record, so you know exactly what you're looking at. Then the same VIN checks open safety recalls on that specific car.
The check digit (position 9) is also your friend: if a VIN doesn't validate, it was mistyped or tampered with. Confirm the windshield VIN matches the door jamb and the title.
Decode a VIN — and see its recalls.
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The research above is free. The app takes a screenshot of one real listing and returns a verdict, a fair-offer number, the red flags specific to that car, a walk-away floor, and a message you can send the seller, word for word.