If you’re in the market for a private-party vehicle, shopping on sites that require a Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) is an important step in protecting yourself from fraud.
The VIN is a vehicle’s fingerprint and is vital for tracking a vehicle’s life – its use, misuse, and demise. Instamotor requires sellers to provide their VIN, we do this so our Fraud & Safety team can screen the vehicle for issues. You can find the VIN number on the driver’s side door panel and at the bottom of the windshield on the driver’s side.
VIN’s have 17 digits and each digit represents a piece of information about the vehicle. The first digit tells the continent the vehicle was produced in, the second gives the manufacturer and sometimes the country of origin, and the tenth gives the model year.
Now you can find out where your vehicle was manufactured just by looking at the **first digit ** (and sometimes second):
In some cases you’ll need the second digit to know for sure:
Now for the 10th digit – the model year:
If you’d like to read more about VIN’s check out this article from Jalopnik.
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