Every car built since the early 1980s has a 17-character Vehicle Identification Number (VIN), sometimes called the chassis number. It is the car's fingerprint: no two vehicles made in the last 40 years share one. The characters look random, but they follow an international standard (ISO 3779), so once you know the pattern you can read a lot from them.
The three parts of a VIN
A VIN is split into three sections:
| Characters | Section | What it tells you |
|---|---|---|
| 1–3 | World Manufacturer Identifier (WMI) | Where and by which manufacturer the vehicle was built |
| 4–9 | Vehicle Descriptor Section (VDS) | The model, body style, engine and other features, in the manufacturer's own code |
| 10–17 | Vehicle Identifier Section (VIS) | The model year (for some makers), the factory and the car's serial number |
Characters 1–3: who built it and where
The first character shows the region or country of manufacture. A few common ones on UK roads:
- S – United Kingdom (for example SAL for Land Rover, SAJ for Jaguar, SJN for Nissan cars built in Sunderland)
- W – Germany (WVW for Volkswagen cars, WBA for BMW)
- V – France and Spain (VF1 for Renault)
- Z – Italy (ZFA for Fiat)
- J – Japan, K – South Korea, L – China
- 1, 4 or 5 – United States
Together, the first three characters identify the manufacturer. If a car is sold to you as a UK-built model but its VIN starts with a different country, ask why: it may be an import, which you should also see in a history check.
Characters 4–9: the model and specification
This part describes the vehicle itself, but each manufacturer uses its own code, so there is no universal table. Some European makers fill unused positions with the letter Z. In North America the 9th character is a check digit worked out from the other characters to catch typing errors; many European cars don't use it.
Characters 10–17: year, factory and serial number
- 10th character: the model year for cars built for North America and for some European makers. Many European manufacturers don't encode the year here, so for a UK car rely on the first registration date instead.
- 11th character: usually the factory that built the car.
- 12th–17th characters: the serial number that makes the VIN unique.
An example
Take the example format WVWZZZ1KZ6W000001, laid out the way Volkswagen writes its European VINs:
- WVW – Volkswagen passenger car, made in Germany
- ZZZ – filler characters used by Volkswagen
- 1K – the model code (here, a Golf of that generation)
- Z – filler instead of a check digit
- 6 – model year 2006
- W – the Wolfsburg factory
- 000001 – the serial number
Letters you will never see
A VIN never contains the letters I, O or Q, because they are too easy to confuse with 1 and 0. If a VIN you are given includes one of them, it has been copied down wrongly or it is not genuine.
What a VIN decoder can't tell you
Decoding a VIN tells you how the car left the factory. It says nothing about what has happened since: outstanding finance, insurance write-offs, theft, plate changes or mileage problems. For that you need a history check. On CarCheckUp you can choose VIN / Chassis No. on the search box, enter the 17 characters, and we find the vehicle's current registration and run the check as normal. The VIN check page explains what is included, and our VIN check guide covers when to use it.
Key points
- A modern VIN has 17 characters and never uses I, O or Q.
- Characters 1–3 show the maker and country, 4–9 the model, 10–17 the year (sometimes), factory and serial number.
- Decoding shows the factory specification; a full history report shows the car's past.
If you would rather not decode it by hand, a VIN number lookup does it for you. Our VIN check works as a free VIN decoder for UK vehicles: enter the 17 characters to find the registration, make, model and MOT history.