Quote:
Originally Posted by NICKG
why would they be in carfax? they were never imported to the North american continent...No registartion here= no carfax. Manufacturers do not "supply" info to carfax
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I'm not 100% sure on this, but carfax should turn up any valid VIN for any manufacturer that has ever registered a vehicle with the DOT. This is because all valid VINs (at least those since the system was standardized in 1982 to 17 digits) are decodable, based on manufacturer. The final 6 digits are always serial numbers, whereas the preceding 11 digits are all code for various options, including check digits. What this all means is that if the manufacturer code and basic model information has ever made it to the carfax database, any similar VIN can be decoded. There may not be a record of one particular car in the database (based on serial #), but carfax should at least be able to figure out what kind of car it is. In fact, you don't even need all 17 digits to decode a VIN, just digits 1-8 and digit 10.
I base this on the fact that I know VINs need to be verifiable without necessarily having records. When I register a lien against a car the VIN checker in the system will make sure it's valid, though it might not have any previous knowledge of that VIN. Hell, there are even javascript VIN decoders all over the internet, not linked to any database.
So I can understand carfax not recognizing a 959 VIN, because up until recently they've never been sold in NA, but it should recognize any 996, or Toyota, Chrysler, etc. The only exception to this I can think of would be one-off cars such as concept cars or perhaps one-off cars made for someone special (like a sultan), etc. but these aren't usually assigned VINs anyways.