What each VIN digit means, with the model year chart

Updated November 1, 2026 · by POC Card

Every vehicle sold in the United States since the 1981 model year has a 17-character VIN, and the federal rule that defines it (49 CFR 565.15) says what each position must carry. Read it left to right and the VIN tells you who built the car, what it is, which model year, where it was assembled and which unit it is.

We will use one VIN throughout: 1HGCM82633A004352, the example the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) uses in its vPIC decoder. It belongs to no customer.

The four sections

A VIN never uses the letters I, O or Q, so they cannot be mistaken for 1 and 0. If you think you see one, it is a number.

Positions 1 to 3: who built it

The first three characters identify the manufacturer and the type of vehicle. They are assigned through SAE International, and NHTSA keeps the list in vPIC. The first character usually tells you the country where it was built, which is why the same brand starts differently depending on the plant. For Honda passenger cars, vPIC lists:

• 1HG: American Honda Motor Co., United States;
• 2HG: Honda of Canada;
• 3HG: Honda de México;
• JHM: Honda Motor Co., Japan.

Manufacturers that build fewer vehicles put a 9 in position 3, and then positions 12 to 14 complete their identifier.

Positions 4 to 8: what it is

The vehicle descriptor section. The rule says which attributes it must encode (for a passenger car: line, series, body type, engine type and restraint systems) but each manufacturer chooses its own codes. That is why you cannot read these five characters by eye: CM826 means nothing until you look it up in what Honda filed with NHTSA. A decoder does exactly that.

One detail matters for the next section: on passenger cars, multipurpose vehicles and trucks of 10,000 pounds gross vehicle weight rating or less, position 7 is a letter on vehicles from model year 2010 onward, and a number before that.

Position 9: the check digit

Position 9 is a calculation over the other 16 characters, so that a mistyped VIN does not add up. Required in the United States, it is how a decoder can tell you that a VIN is wrong before looking anything up.

The calculation, in four steps:

1. Turn each character into a number. Digits keep their value. Letters: A=1, B=2, C=3, D=4, E=5, F=6, G=7, H=8, J=1, K=2, L=3, M=4, N=5, P=7, R=9, S=2, T=3, U=4, V=5, W=6, X=7, Y=8, Z=9.
2. Multiply each value by the weight of its position: 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 10, then 0 for position 9, then 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2.
3. Add the 17 products.
4. Divide by 11. The remainder is the check digit; a remainder of 10 is written as X.

On the example:

311 divided by 11 is 28, remainder 3. Position 9 is 3: the VIN adds up.

Two caveats. A correct check digit says the VIN was written correctly, not that it belongs to the car in front of you: someone who copies a real VIN onto another car copies its check digit too. And vehicles built for markets outside North America do not always calculate it, which is why our decoder warns when it does not add up but still shows the result.

Position 10: the model year

The tenth character is the model year, which is not necessarily the year it was built: a 2026 model can leave the plant in 2025. The codes run through a cycle of 30 characters (letters without I, O, Q, U and Z, then the digits 1 to 9, never 0), so every code is used twice:

How to tell the two apart: on cars, multipurpose vehicles and light trucks, if position 7 is a number the year is between 1980 and 2009; if it is a letter, between 2010 and 2039. In the example, position 7 is 2 and position 10 is 3: model year 2003. For heavier trucks, buses and trailers that rule does not apply, and a decoder is the reliable way to know.

Position 11: the plant

The eleventh character identifies the assembly plant, with each manufacturer’s own code. In the example, A decodes to Marysville, Ohio.

Positions 12 to 17: the serial number

The production sequence that makes this unit different from every other with the same first eleven characters. On cars and light trucks the last five are always numbers. For smaller manufacturers (a 9 in position 3), positions 12 to 14 are part of their identifier and only 15 to 17 are the sequence.

Decode a VIN

Our decoder does all of the above at once: it checks the check digit and asks vPIC, NHTSA’s database, what the manufacturer filed for that VIN. For the example, it returns a 2003 Honda Accord coupé, EX-V6 trim, assembled in Marysville, Ohio. Free and without an account.

What the VIN does not contain: color, options added later, owners, mileage, accidents or recalls. If you are buying, this guide goes through the free checks in order. If the car is already yours, a VIN Card keeps its spec sheet, its service history and a card for the glove box, one payment per vehicle.

Sources, read on October 31, 2026

• 49 CFR 565.15: Content requirements (Vehicle Identification Number), via Cornell Legal Information Institute
• NHTSA: Product Information Catalog and Vehicle Listing (vPIC)

Questions people ask before buying.