VIN country of origin: what the first character tells you

The first two characters map to a country

The first three characters of a VIN form the world manufacturer identifier, or WMI, defined in the standard ISO 3780. Within it, the first character marks a region and the first two together mark a country. SAE International administers the assignments.

Some countries hold a whole character, as Japan does with J and Germany with W. Others share one. S from SA to SM belongs to the United Kingdom, while later S codes belong to Germany, Poland and other countries.

VIN country of origin chart

These are the ranges you will meet most often on cars in the catalogs, checked against the WMI tables on Wikibooks. Beyond them, the letters S to Z belong to European countries, J to R mostly to Asian ones, and 8 and 9 to South American ones such as Argentina and Brazil.

• 1, 4 and 5: United States
• 2: Canada
• 3: Mexico, for most of the range
• J: Japan
• KL to KR: South Korea, including KMH for Hyundai and KNA for Kia
• L: China
• MA to ME: India
• NL to NR: Turkey
• SA to SM: United Kingdom
• TA to TH: Switzerland, and TJ to TP: Czech Republic
• UU to UX: Romania, and U5 to U7: Slovakia
• VF to VR: France, and VS to VW: Spain
• W: Germany
• YF to YK: Finland, and YS to YW: Sweden
• ZA to ZU: Italy

Country of assembly vs brand origin

A Japanese or German badge says nothing about where the car was built. A Toyota car from the Kentucky plant starts 4T1, a Honda car from Ohio starts 1HG, and a Mercedes-Benz SUV built in the United States starts 4JG. A Volvo from the Chengdu or Taizhou plants in China starts LYV, and a Tesla from Gigafactory Shanghai starts LRW.

European production follows the same logic. Dacia uses UU1 for Romania, Škoda TMB for the Czech Republic, and Hyundai TMA for its Czech plant and NLH for its Turkish partner Hyundai Assan. The free VIN decoder shows the country behind each of these codes.

Cases where the first character misleads

The WMI names the manufacturing company that registered it, and that company is not always in the country where the car was built. Teslas from Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg carry XP7, a code in the Netherlands block, because it belongs to Tesla’s European company based there.

Mazda’s JMZ is another case. It starts with the Japanese J, and Wikibooks lists it also on the Mazda 2 built by Ford in Spain and the Mazda 2 Hybrid built by Toyota in France. A car imported into another market keeps its original VIN, so a grey import reads its home-market country in the first characters. Our guide to imported and grey-market vehicles covers what that does to parts.

The build country changes the parts

Plants build to the market they serve. A Hyundai Tucson from Alabama (5NM) and one from the Czech plant (TMA) share a name and can differ in emissions hardware, lighting and equipment. The country code is your first warning that a part number from a forum or a donor car may belong to the other version.

The catalog goes further than the country. Decode the VIN and you get the market, the build date and the options for that one car. See same part, different number by country for how part numbers split by market.