Checking a car's history: what the chassis number gives away

A vehicle identification number has seventeen characters and is internationally standardised. The first three denote the manufacturer and the country where it builds the car. The middle block describes the vehicle itself — model line, body, engine, encoded differently by each maker. The last block identifies the individual example, usually with a serial number.

The letters I, O and Q do not appear in it, because they would be confused with one and zero. That makes the fastest test there is: a number containing an O is not a chassis number but a typing error or an invention. The same goes for the length: seventeen characters, not sixteen and not eighteen.

One widespread assumption does not hold in Europe: that model year and plant can be read off fixed positions. That is regulated for the North American market, not for Europe. Decode a European number by American rules and you get a result — just not a correct one. The year of manufacture is in the registration document, not in the number.

The number appears in several places on the car, and that is exactly what makes it useful: a single plate can be swapped, all the locations at once cannot. It is stamped into a load-bearing panel — depending on the design, into the bulkhead in the engine bay, in a wheel arch, under the passenger seat, in the boot floor or on a strut mounting. On top of that come the type plate, the sticker on the B-pillar or in the door shut, and often an etching in the lower corner of the windscreen.

Compare at least two places on the car with the entry in the papers, and photograph each. It takes three minutes. It is the one check where a discrepancy is not discussed — if the numbers do not match, the appointment ends there, without explanations and without a deposit.

The most valuable information comes not from a service provider but from the manufacturer. Any franchised workshop for the make can pull up the build record against a chassis number: production date, paint code, factory-fitted equipment, engine variant, often the country of delivery too. Added to that is whatever work is recorded in the maker's system — warranty claims, recall campaigns and, on cars with digital records, the service history.

That query settles three questions at once. First, whether the equipment promised in the advert really was fitted at the factory — the commonest honest error in listings. Second, whether the stated colour is the original one; a different paint code is no scandal but worth a question. Third, whether there are open recalls that ought to be dealt with before registration.

The enquiry normally requires the keeper's cooperation, because it concerns data about his car. A seller who is serious will fetch it himself — it costs him one phone call and makes his advert stand up. On an imported car it is particularly worthwhile, because it names the country of delivery.

Besides the manufacturer there are official and commercial sources. Official ones are the vehicle registers of the licensing authorities, the police stolen-vehicle databases and, in some countries, registers of security interests over vehicles. Commercial ones are services that pool data from several sources and produce a report against a chassis number for a fee.

Two limitations have to be understood or such reports get read wrongly. First, they see only what was reported somewhere: a claim that went through an insurer, a car recorded as stolen, a write-off documented in a participating country. A crash repaired privately and never reported appears nowhere.

Second, an empty report is not proof but an absence of entries. It says: nothing is recorded in the sources queried. It does not say: nothing has happened to this car. Turning that into “no accident damage” is a misreading — and the physical inspection remains necessary either way.

Carvexia does not run history checks and does not offer them. What appears on a vehicle page was entered by the seller; the marketplace displays it and does not verify it against any register. We say so plainly, because assuming that a marketplace has “already checked all that” replaces precisely the care that matters.

In practice: you ask the seller for the chassis number, and you run the queries yourself or have them run. That is less convenient and more solid — afterwards you know which source said what, instead of trusting a badge whose basis you cannot see.

The same caution applies to supposed reports a seller sends you as a file. An image of a report is not a report; it can be altered in minutes. If a report is to count, you order it yourself, using the number you read off the car — not the one printed in the advert.

There is an order in which each step can make the next unnecessary. It begins on the phone and ends at the car, and it saves most of the wasted journeys at the very first step.

The steps cost very different amounts. The first two are free and take minutes, the third costs the seller a phone call, and only the last ones can cost money and time. Which is exactly why it pays to work through them in this order rather than starting with the most expensive.

The chassis number is also the key to mileage, because every independent record hangs on it: the inspection report, the workshop entry in the maker's system and, in several countries, an official register of readings taken at inspections. With the number you can set those readings against each other instead of believing the instrument.

Which checks on the car itself belong with that — paper trail, wear, electronic trail — is set out in full in the article on odometer tampering and is not repeated here. What matters is the connection: without the number the official sources cannot be reached, and without the official sources the comparison is limited to the service book.

A discrepancy between car and papers has three possible explanations, and two of them are rare. Rare is a clerical error by the authority that the keeper can document. Also rare but possible is a properly executed body shell replacement, documented and recorded by the authorities. The third explanation is the commonest, and it concerns the identity of the car.

So the rule here is absolute: do not negotiate, do not pay a deposit, leave. In many legal systems even a good-faith buyer cannot acquire ownership of stolen property; the car is seized, and the purchase price is with a seller who can no longer be reached. The loss falls entirely on the buyer, who did nothing wrong except this one thing.

What to do instead: keep photographs of the numbers, the advert and the contact details, and inform the police. It costs you half an hour and is the only response that changes anything for the next person who goes to look.