How to read a VIN, position by position

Federal regulation divides a 17-character VIN into four sections. The example below uses 1M8GDM9AXKP042788, a VIN widely used in textbooks to demonstrate the check digit.

1. 11
2. M2
3. 83
4. G4
5. D5
6. M6
7. 97
8. A8
9. X9
10. K10
11. P11
12. 012
13. 413
14. 214
15. 715
16. 816
17. 817

Section 1 — positions 1 to 3: world manufacturer identifier

The first three characters identify the manufacturer and the type of vehicle. In the example, 1M8. A manufacturer can hold several WMIs, for example one per vehicle type or country of manufacture. When the third character is 9, the manufacturer builds fewer than 1,000 vehicles a year and positions 12–14 carry an additional identifier. See the WMI table for codes of major manufacturers.

Section 2 — positions 4 to 8: vehicle descriptor

Five characters describe the vehicle's attributes. Part 565 lists what they must capture for each vehicle type — for passenger cars, things like make, line, series, body type, engine type and restraint systems. The coding itself is chosen by the manufacturer, which is why decoding these positions needs the manufacturer's submission to NHTSA rather than a fixed table.

Section 3 — position 9: check digit

A number from 0 to 9, or the letter X for ten, calculated from the other sixteen characters. In the example it is X. The check-digit guide shows the full calculation.

Section 4 — positions 10 to 17

• Position 10 is the model year. K stands for 1989 or 2019; the model-year table lists every code.
• Position 11 is the assembly plant, coded by the manufacturer.
• Positions 12–17 are the production sequence number (for small manufacturers, positions 15–17).

Try it on your own VIN

The VIN decoder colors each section, verifies the check digit and model-year code locally, and can then fetch the manufacturer-reported details from NHTSA.