Reference

How to read a VIN

Every road vehicle built for the US market since the 1981 model year carries the same seventeen-character structure, set out in federal regulation 49 CFR Part 565.

By Pixoware. Published 12 September 2026, updated 28 October 2026.

The sections

A VIN is exactly seventeen characters, and every position must be filled. The federal rule that sets the format, 49 CFR Part 565, splits those seventeen characters into four sections. In practice most people think of three parts plus the check digit: who built the vehicle, what it is, and which one it is.

The four sections of a VIN under 49 CFR 565.15
Positions	Section	What it holds
1–3	World manufacturer identifier (WMI)	The manufacturer and the type of vehicle
4–8	Vehicle descriptor	Model attributes, coded however the manufacturer chooses
9	Check digit	An arithmetic check on the other sixteen characters
10–17	Vehicle identifier	Model year, assembly plant, production sequence number

Only the digits 0–9 and the capital letters other than I, O and Q are allowed, printed in a plain sans-serif face. Those three letters are left out because they are too easily confused with 1 and 0.

Positions 1–3 — World Manufacturer Identifier

Part 565 says the first three characters identify the manufacturer and the type of vehicle. The codes themselves are handed out by SAE International, which coordinates WMI assignment for US manufacturers under contract to NHTSA and acts as the international maintenance agency for the WMI scheme set out in ISO 3780. WMI codes explained covers them in more depth.

The first character broadly indicates where the identifier was issued: digits for North America, Oceania and South America, letters for Africa, Asia and Europe. The examples below are WMIs as NHTSA's vPIC database lists them.

First characters and example WMIs from NHTSA vPIC
First character	Issued in	Examples
1, 4, 5	United States	1FA Ford · 1G1 General Motors · 4T1 Toyota (Kentucky) · 5YJ Tesla
7	United States and New Zealand	7FC and 7PD Rivian · 7SA Tesla · 7FA Honda · 7A5 Ford New Zealand
2	Canada	2T1 Toyota Canada · 2HG Honda of Canada
3	Mexico	3FA Ford Mexico · 3VW Volkswagen de Mexico · 3N1 Nissan Mexicana
6	Australia	6MM Mitsubishi Australia · 6MP Ford Australia
8, 9	South America	9BF Ford Brasil · 9BV Volvo do Brasil
J	Japan	JTD Toyota · JF1 Subaru · JM1 Mazda
K	South Korea	KMH Hyundai · KNA Kia
L	China	LVY Daqing Volvo
S	United Kingdom	SAL Jaguar Land Rover · SJK Nissan UK
W	Germany	WBA BMW · WVW Volkswagen · WP0 Porsche · W1K Mercedes-Benz
Y	Sweden, Belgium	YV1 Volvo Cars

The 7 row is the one older charts get wrong. Codes beginning with 7 used to mean Oceania only, and New Zealand still holds the 7A block. But NHTSA's database now lists a run of 7-series identifiers registered to US manufacturers: Rivian's 7FC and 7PD (both added in 2021), Tesla's 7SA (November 2021), and others such as 7FA for American Honda, 7SV for Toyota Motor Manufacturing Texas and 7JR for Volvo Car USA. A VIN that starts with 7 is not necessarily from New Zealand.

Note the wording, too: the WMI says who the identifier was issued to, not where the car was built. In a September 2024 interpretation, NHTSA's Chief Counsel said Part 565 does not require the WMI to show the country of manufacture, and allowed Ford to use a US-issued WMI on vehicles built abroad. The assembly plant is coded in position 11. So a 1 or a 5 tells you the identifier belongs to a US manufacturer; it does not prove the car came off a US line.

The small-manufacturer rule — a 9 in position 3

A manufacturer that builds fewer than 1,000 vehicles of a given type a year counts as low-volume under Part 565, and it does not get a three-character WMI of its own. Instead it gets a six-character identifier: positions 1–3, with a 9 in position 3, plus positions 12–14. The regulation is explicit that a 9 in the third position always means a six-character identifier. Only positions 15–17 are left for the production sequence number.

NHTSA's database shows the pattern in its WMI listings: Volvo Group Canada, for example, appears under 2P9001 for buses and 2P9110 for incomplete vehicles. When you see a 9 in position 3, read positions 12–14 as part of the maker's name, not as part of a serial number. The threshold was 500 vehicles until NHTSA raised it to 1,000 in its 2008 rewrite of Part 565.

Positions 4–8 — vehicle descriptor

There is no universal code for these five characters. Part 565 lets each manufacturer choose the characters and where they go, as long as certain attributes can be deciphered from the information it files with NHTSA. What must be encoded depends on the type of vehicle:

What positions 4–8 must encode (49 CFR 565.15, Table I)
Vehicle type	Required attributes
Passenger car	Make, line, series, body type, engine type, all restraint devices and their location
Multipurpose passenger vehicle	Make, line, series, body type, engine type, GVWR; restraints too if GVWR is 10,000 lb or less
Truck	Make, model or line, series, chassis, cab type, engine type, brake system, GVWR; restraints too if GVWR is 10,000 lb or less
Bus	Make, model or line, series, body type, engine type, brake system
Trailer	Make, type of trailer, body type, length, axle configuration
Motorcycle	Make, type of motorcycle, line, engine type, net brake horsepower
Low-speed vehicle	Make, engine type, brake system, restraint system type, body type, GVWR

For passenger cars, and for multipurpose vehicles and trucks of 10,000 lb GVWR or less, position 7 must be a letter under the current rules. That is what lets a decoder tell a 2010s model from a 1980s one; see model year codes.

Manufacturers must file the key to their coding with NHTSA at least 60 days before offering the first vehicle that uses it for sale. Those filings are what NHTSA's vPIC database, and so our decoder, are built from. This is why decoding a VIN takes a database lookup rather than arithmetic.

Position 9 — check digit

Once every other character is set, the manufacturer computes position 9 from them with a fixed formula. The result is a digit from 0 to 9, or X for a remainder of 10. It exists to catch transcription errors. See how the check digit works for the arithmetic, or check one.

Positions 10–17 — vehicle identifier

Position 10 is the model year code. Position 11 is the plant of manufacture, using the manufacturer's own plant codes. Positions 12–17 are the number the manufacturer assigned in sequence during production, except for low-volume makers, where only 15–17 are. For passenger cars and light multipurpose vehicles and trucks the last five characters must be digits; for all other vehicles, the last four.

Part 565 also says no two vehicles built within a 60-year period starting with the 1980 model year may share a VIN. That rule is the reason the model year code needs the position 7 test.

A worked example

The VIN below is illustrative. Its first three characters are a real WMI — vPIC lists 1HG for American Honda Motor Co. passenger cars — but everything after that is invented, and it does not describe a real car. The check digit is correct.

1HGAB1CD2TK123456

Illustrative VIN, position by position
Position	Character	Reading
1	1	Identifier issued to a US manufacturer
2–3	HG	Completes the WMI 1HG: American Honda, passenger car
4–6	AB1	Descriptor; meaning comes from the manufacturer's filing
7	C	A letter, so position 10 is read in the 2010–2039 cycle
8	D	Descriptor
9	2	Check digit: the weighted sum is 288, and 288 divided by 11 leaves 2
10	T	Model year 2026
11	K	Assembly plant, in the manufacturer's own code
12–17	123456	Production sequence number; the last five are digits, as required

When we ran this VIN through NHTSA's vPIC on 26 October 2026, it returned the make (Honda), the manufacturer, model year 2026 and vehicle type, and nothing else, with the message “No detailed data available currently.” That is what you would expect: the WMI and year code are real patterns, but the descriptor characters match nothing Honda has filed. Change position 7 to a digit and recompute the check digit (1HGAB12D0TK123456) and vPIC reads the same T as 1996. Change only the check digit to 3 and vPIC adds “Check Digit (9th position) does not calculate properly.”

What the VIN does not tell you

A VIN describes the vehicle as the manufacturer built it. It carries nothing about what happened afterwards: no owners, accidents, title brands or mileage. Part 565 does not require it to encode the color or the build date either; the month and year of manufacture are on the certification label in the door jamb (see where to find the VIN). For what a VIN can and cannot settle before a purchase, see buying a used car.

The letters that never appear

I, O and Q are excluded from every position. If you think you are reading one of those letters, you are reading a digit. Our decoder substitutes 1 for I and 0 for O and Q automatically, and tells you when it has.

Quick answers

How many characters are in a VIN?

Seventeen. Every road vehicle built for the US market since the 1981 model year carries the same seventeen-character structure, and every position must be filled.

What do the first three digits of a VIN mean?

They are the World Manufacturer Identifier, which identifies the manufacturer and the type of vehicle. It says who the identifier was issued to, not where the car was built; the assembly plant is coded in position 11.

Why are the letters I, O and Q not used in a VIN?

Because they are too easily confused with 1 and 0. They are excluded from every position, so if you think you are reading one of those letters, you are reading a digit.

Does a VIN tell you a car's color or build date?

No. Part 565 does not require the VIN to encode the color or the build date, and it carries nothing about owners, accidents, title brands or mileage. The month and year of manufacture are on the certification label in the door jamb.

Sources

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