219
On the website of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, you can find out for free about the last operation with a vehicle, the date and place of its last registration, the year of manufacture and general technical specifications. In the Driver's Electronic Account, you can check the VIN code of any vehicle registered in Ukraine.
Additional information by VIN code can be obtained provided that: that the data is available in the Ministry of Internal Affairs database. Yes, you can check the number of owners, the date of first registration, and the presence of encumbrances on the car.
It would seem that it is just a string of numbers and letters, but it contains all the details about the car, down to the date and city of its release. Moreover, the VIN code helps to tell both the history of the purchase and the nature of the operation of a particular car. What else can be learned from the identification VIN code of the car, writes RBC-Ukraine.
Why do you need a VIN code?
Already in the middle of the last century, when cars manufactured in different countries and continents began to “mix” around the world, there was a need for a single global vehicle identification system.
And today's seventeen-digit VIN code was created - Vehicle Identification Number (from English - vehicle identification number). And by the 1980s it had turned into a kind of vehicle dossier, from which you can find out the main characteristics not of a specific model of a given brand, but of each specific instance. Despite the fact that the code is formed according to a single global principle, there are small differences between brands.
How to decode a VIN code
The vehicle identification number contains three groups of characters, both numbers and letters. In particular, all ten numbers and the Latin alphabet are used, with the exception of the letters I, O and Q (since they are similar in writing to certain numbers). The fact that in one car in a certain place you can see a number, and in another - a letter, does not contribute to the clarity of the coding. And despite everything, with the right approach, confusion does not arise.
– From the first to the third characters. WMI (World Manufacturers Identification) – the code of the automaker (company) according to the standardized world classification;
– Fourth through ninth characters. VDS (Vehicle Description Section) – the part that describes the vehicle;
– Tenth to seventeenth characters. VIS (Vehicle Identification Section) – the so-called vehicle identification group;
Therefore, each of the named groups also needs to be deciphered, which we will discuss below.
WMI: The first character is the geographical zone of the world, the second is the country. Both numbers and letters are used.
The first WMI character
– from 1 to 5 – North America;
– from 6 to 7 – Oceania;
– from 8 to 9 – South America;
– from A to H – Africa;
– from J to R – Asia;
– from S to Z – Europe;
Second WMI character
This encodes the country where the specific car was made. But the second character should only be decoded together with the first, so a kind of table is used. For example:
Africa
AA-AN SOUTH AFRICA, DA-DE Egypt, EA-EE Ethiopia
Asia
JA-JT Japan, KL-KR Korea, LA-L0 China, MA-ME India, NL-NR Turkey, RF-RK Taiwan
Europe
SA-SM Great Britain, SN-ST Germany, SU-SZ Poland, TJ-TP The Czech Republic, TR-TV Hungary, UU-UZ Romania, U5-U7 Slovakia, VA-VE Austria, VF-VR France, VS-VW Spain, WA-W0 Germany, VX-V2 Serbia, XS-XW USSR/CIS, X3-X0 Russia, Y6-Y0 Ukraine, ZA-ZR Italy
North America
1A-10 USA 4A-40 USA, 5A-50 USA 2A-20 Canada, 3A-3W Mexico
South America
8A-8E Argentina, 9A-9E brazil, 93-99 Brazil
Oceania
6A-6W Australia, 7A-7E New Zealand
Third character of the code WMI denotes the car manufacturer, and it is also deciphered only together with the previous two. For example, Ukrainian car factories once had the following codes:
ZAZ – FOR YOU
KrAZ – X1C
LuAZ – XTD Y6L
Eurocar – Y6U
LAZ – Y8A
VDS: the second block of characters. This group is called descriptive, because it consists of technical information about a specific instance. There is some unsystematicity with these characters, because the automaker encrypts these characters (these are 4 - 9 characters of the VIN code) at its discretion.
For example, in the Renault brand, the first letter in the VDS group means the type of car body, for example, in the Duster it will be H (station wagon). The next two characters in Renault are responsible for belonging to a certain family of the brand, in the Logan/Sandero/Duster family these are the letters SR. The fourth character of the VDS group (the seventh in the general order of the VIN code) in the same Duster will be the letter A, D, G or H. Each of these letters in the Frenchman indicates a certain configuration of the car. The next letter is the engine model code, and the last letter in the VDS code in the Renault brand is responsible for the type of transmission.
For many manufacturers, the ninth digit is an important point in the number, the so-called VIN-code check digit. It is put in by the manufacturer himself, and it becomes clear whether the entire VIN on this car is fake. In this case, the ninth digit of the VIN-code is the sum of some previous digits. Sometimes the automaker does not implement this control function of the 9th character, and then the letter Z is put in its place. And sometimes the digit or letter in the 9th place means the features of the assembly of a particular instance. For example, the body of the Daewoo Lanos, which is widespread in the world, could have been welded in Korea, Poland, Ukraine, and rolled off the assembly line in Illichivsk or Zaporizhia.
VIS: the third, last block of characters of the VIN code. The first character of this group (the 10th in the whole code) encodes the year of manufacture of the car. The code here is general, it can be both a letter and a number:
2001 year – 1, 2002 year – 2, 2003 year – 3, etc. Since 2010, the letters of the Latin alphabet have been used: A – 2010 year, B – 2011 year, C – 2012 year, D – 2013 year, etc. However, the letters I, O, Q, U and Z are omitted. Meanwhile, some quite respected manufacturers (Renault, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota and others) do not encrypt the year of manufacture in their VIN codes.
Next comes the 11th character in the overall count, which indicates the factory (plant) on the conveyor of which the car was finally assembled. For example, for the same Lanos, the assembly plant codes were as follows: 0 — ZAO “ZAZ” (Ukraine), A — Asaka (Uzbekistan), B — Bupyeong (Korea), K — Kunsan (Korea), I — (India), C — Changwon (China), W — FSO (Poland).
After all, the last five or six characters of the general VIN code (how many exactly depends on the brand). These numbers are called the serial number of the car. Manufacturers count each in their own way, for example, taking into account facelifts or not. Although for the car owner this does not matter at all, because more accurate information is in the first two groups of the code.
Pidsumok
If you are buying a car from your hands, it would be better for you to understand the VIN codes of this make and model in advance. So that when you get acquainted with a copy that you are particularly interested in, you can decipher all the signs and compare them with the real state of affairs. It is important to do this in advance so that when registering the car after purchase, no discrepancies arise.
