VIN Basics Blog

Oftentimes we don't look for the spare tire in our vehicles until we are on the side of the road with a flat tire.  Once in that situation you may be checking frantically for it.  You check the trunk or rear cargo area, under the rear of the vehicle but it is nowhere to be found.  It may be that you are one of many consumers that have purchased a vehicle without a spare tire. AAA has noticed the growing trend of vehicles without spare tires and reports the trend is likely to continue in a recent article online

Determining the installed transmission type from VIN alone has traditionally been hit-or-miss. Not knowing the transmissions installed in the vehicles in your inventory can present a number of challenges. Unfortunately, the existing VIN standards do not require OEMs to encode transmission information directly in the VIN. However, due to a gradual decrease in transmission options over time, this is becoming easier. This article explores four common questions about VIN decoding transmission data, and provides suggested solutions for significantly increasing the match rate of decoded transmissions in your inventory or data feed.

In recent years, there have been fewer and fewer vehicles offered with a manual transmission.  Automotive News recently stated in an article that only 5-7% of new vehicles sold in the US have a manual transmission.  This has resulted in more VIN decodes being transmission specific, which is a nice benefit to those of us doing VIN decoding.  However, the manual transmission will be missed by both me personally and by dealers everywhere.

If you're using an automotive data provider for VIN decoding, you probably have a few vehicles in inventory that your data provider cannot decode. Some of these might be classic cars, vehicles sold in Europe or Asia then imported into the US, Trailers, or other types of vehicles that your data provider simply does not support. However, it's likely that some of these vehicles cannot be decoded because the VIN number is just plain incorrect, usually due to human error when reading the VIN off the vehicle. Fortunately, there are a number of ways to determine a VIN is invalid. You can employ these methods to isolate your invalid VINs and either make automated corrections or go back to the field to get the correct VIN off your vehicle.

If you were alive in the late 1980's and early 1990's and hear mention of the spaghetti sauce brand "Prego", you almost certainly will think of their catch phrase "It's in there!"  No matter what desired ingredient was asked about in Prego's TV adds the response was, of course, "It's in there!".  Often times we have potential customers approach us hoping to be able to determine a specific detail or attribute of the vehicle using only the vehicle identification number.  While decoding a VIN can return a large amount of useful information, there are a lot of vehicle details that you are not going to be able to determine from a basic decode of the VIN Pattern alone. 

If you have read any of our other articles on VIN decoding you know already that the VIN pattern has certain information that it is required to contain in the US and Canada.  However, if you acquire and review a VIN file, like VIN Basic, you will come across exceptions to even these basic rules.  Here are a couple of VIN rules exceptions that have lead to questions from our customers in the past.

As technology, solutions and inventory processes continue to evolve, automotive marketing companies face some interesting challenges when it comes to vehicle marketing. With so many classified sites representing dealer inventory locally, regionally and nationally – it can be difficult to “rise above the rest”. This is also (maybe especially) a challenge with Franchised automotive dealer websites which represent an auto dealers inventory direct.

Developers will receive access to Manufacturer General Motor's OnStar API which is called ATOMS (advanced telematics operating system) sometime in the first half of 2012. OnStar president Linda Marshall described the consumer benefits in terms of functionality comparable to computers, smartphones and tablets as a response to the growth in the mobile applications market for Android and iOS platforms.