KNOW HOW TO DECODE VEHICLE CHASSIS NUMBER !

Some dealers often find it difficult to clear their pending stocks and hence, sell an old car to customers badging it as a new one. Many buyers, due to lack of knowledge, fall for the words and humbleness of the sales representative and get easily get trapped and only realize things at a time when in most cases the payment has been made. But you can actually find out the manufacturing month and year of a vehicle by decoding the chassis number. In this article we will know how to decode a chassis number.

Automotive manufacturers around the world use a Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) that can be decoded to reveal the Month & Year of production. Each car has a unique VIN that is usually stamped somewhere within the engine bay, or around the passenger compartment. Sometimes VIN number is also referred to as chassis number and it is stamped on chassis.

Before you buy a new or used car, make sure to verify the car details using the VIN number.

1. The length of the VIN number can be as long as 19 letters. Consider it to be the equivalent of your Aadhar number, which is unique to you and cannot be duplicated.

2. The VIN is an alphanumeric code and you cannot identify the manufacturing month and year simply by looking at it. There are different methods to decode the VIN as different manufacturers use different techniques to embed the manufacturing timeline of the vehicle in the VIN.

3. Car companies split the month and year of manufacturing into English alphabets. In the same way, the letter ‘A’ is used for the year 2010 while the ‘Y’ denotes 2030. It has to be kept in mind that letters ‘I’, ‘O’ and ‘Q’ are not used in the VIN number. The table below will help you understand in a better way.

For manufacturing year before 2010 the manufacturers generally use 1,2,3 and so on, for example Hyundai uses 8 for 2008 model cars. Different car makers use the above letters at different places in VIN number and for this reason, there is no standard way to find out exactly which place shows the manufacturing year and month on the VIN number. Here is how some of the top automakers code the manufacturing month and year in the VIN. In simple words, you need to know which number of characters to look for, depending on the brand of your car. Here’s how to spot them for some of the most popular car brands in India.

1. Maruti Suzuki takes the 10th letter to show manufacturing year while the 11th letter denotes the month of that year.

2. Hyundai uses the 10th letter to show the manufacturing year while the 19th letter is used to code the month.

3. Mahindra codes the manufacturing year in the 10th letter while for the month, it uses the 12th letter.

4. Honda cars the 10th letter to denote the manufacturing year while 9th alphabet is used to indicate the month as per their set of codes.

5. Tata Motors use the 10th alphabet to represent the manufacturing year while the 12th letter is used to symbolize the respective month.

Now let us decode this VIN number for better understanding.

The VIN number above is MALC381ULHM299926.

MAL (Manufacturer Identifier) - Hyundai Motor Company , India

C (Vehicle Line)-Creta

3 (Model and series)

8 (Body Type)- Wagon

1 (Restraint System, Brake system)-Both Side: Active Belt

U (Engine Type)- Diesel Engine 1.6 (TCI-U2)

L (Check and other digits)-RHD (Right Hand Driver) & MT

H (Production Year)-2017

M (Production Plant)- Chennai

29926-Vehicle serial number

Hope, this article gave you a basic idea how to read VIN number of a vehicle and what information you can gather from it.

Thank You for reading.

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