The Mercedes Data Card and SA Codes: Reading the Build from a VIN

What a data card actually is

Every Mercedes is built to an order, and the factory keeps the order. The data card, Datenkarte in the original German, is that record for one vehicle. It carries the FIN, the Baumuster or internal model designation, the sales name, the paint and upholstery codes, and a block of short equipment codes listing what was fitted on the line. It reads like a build sheet. If the car left with a tow preparation or a particular headlight type, the card says so in code.

Mercedes holds this in an after-sales system of its own. The company's developer portal describes its Vehicle Datacard service as the REST web service component of VeDoc, short for Vehicle Documentation, and says it provides datacard information for one vehicle. That is worth knowing at a parts desk, because it tells you where the data comes from. The printed card in a service booklet and the card a dealer prints today are two views onto the same factory record.

Through the paper service booklet era, cars were delivered with a printed copy tucked into the booklet, and it is worth asking for on an older vehicle. Plenty of second and third owners have never seen it, because the booklet went missing two owners ago and nobody thought it mattered. Service records are digital on recent cars, so on a current Mercedes there may be no paper card to hunt for at all. At a counter all of that is survivable, because the FIN reaches the same build information without the paper.

• FIN: Fahrzeug-Identifizierungsnummer, the German term Mercedes uses for the 17-character VIN
• Baumuster: the internal model designation, more specific than the sales name
• Paint code and upholstery code: the factory colour and interior finish, written as codes
• SA codes: the block of special-equipment codes recording what was fitted on the line
• Engine and transmission designations for that vehicle

SA codes, in the words a parts desk uses

SA is short for Sonderausstattung, special equipment. Each code names one thing the factory fitted that was not standard on that model: a seat heater, an audio system, a suspension variant, a lighting package built for one market's regulations. A well-optioned Mercedes carries dozens of them, and the block runs long on this brand because market variants are encoded the same way as comfort options.

In shape they are short, usually three characters and most often three digits on the older cars. Other manufacturers keep equipment registers of the same kind under their own names, and our post on reading the vehicle data plate and option codes covers that cross-brand picture.

What earns them a parts advisor's attention on a Mercedes is the width of the option catalogue behind them. Two cars of the same model year with the same engine can take different headlight assemblies and different brake hardware, and the equipment block is where the factory wrote that difference down. The FIN identifies the car. The equipment recorded against it decides which of the catalog's branches belongs to it.

Interior work is where this bites hardest, because the upholstery code drives the seat and trim panel numbers, and a customer naming the colour is naming a family of finishes, several of them dark and none of them a code. Lighting divides the same way, with assemblies that look identical in a photograph and carry different numbers. Mercedes also encodes genuinely unusual builds here, the armoured Sonderschutz cars among them, and those builds bring restrictions of their own to which codes can appear.

• Colour-keyed body panels, mirror caps and bumper components
• Headlight and rear lamp types, including market-specific variants
• Brake hardware where an option changed disc or caliper specification
• Towing equipment and its wiring preparation
• Seats, upholstery, door cards and interior trim finishes
• Audio, telematics and antenna equipment
• Suspension variants fitted as an option

Why we are not publishing an SA code table

SA code tables are everywhere online, and we are not adding another one. The format does not fit the data, and the reason why is the most useful thing on this page.

Codes are allocated per model series and revised through production. One long-running W140 reference makes the point inside a single series: front seat heating appears under a string of different code numbers across the 1991 to 1999 model years, and individual codes carry applicability restrictions, with one flagged as inapplicable to the armoured Sonderschutz cars and others limited to particular Baumuster numbers. That is the variation inside one model series. Set it against every series Mercedes has built and the idea of a single table covering them all stops being credible.

Markets pull in the same direction from another angle. A code covering a lighting or regulatory variant only exists where that variant was sold, so a list compiled from one market's cars will omit codes you meet at the counter and mislabel others.

That leaves a table that is right for the cars it was compiled from and unreliable for the next one, with no warning when it has gone wrong. That is the worst property a reference can have, because you keep ordering with full confidence. Reading the codes against the vehicle's own record removes the problem at the root. The record belongs to that FIN, so there is nothing to mismatch.

What the FIN gets you without the card

Mercedes calls the VIN the FIN, Fahrzeug-Identifizierungsnummer. Same 17 characters and the same standard, with different letters on the paperwork. Any Mercedes catalog worth the money takes it as the starting point and does not ask you for a model and a year.

Two separate things sit behind that number, and keeping them apart saves a lot of confusion. The card itself lives in Mercedes' after-sales record, VeDoc, and reaches you through a dealer or through a Mercedes workshop subscription that serves it. The printed copy in the service booklet is the free route when it has survived. The parts catalog is a different application: it reads the same factory record to decide which components belong to your car, which is what settles an order at the counter.

So the sequence at a parts desk is short. Take the FIN off the car and enter it in the Mercedes catalog. The catalog resolves the build behind that number and shows the assemblies the car actually has, with most option branches already filtered against its equipment record.

A few splits survive that filtering. The catalog still hands you a choice where a colour-keyed or trim-keyed part needs its finish specified, and where a supersession or a retrofit opens a branch the original build never had. Those are the moments the codes on the card earn their keep, and they are why it pays to know what the card holds even when the software does most of the work.

It also changes what you ask the customer. The unanswerable version of the question is whether the car has the sports brakes. The answerable version is the FIN, and you read the result yourself in the time it takes them to spell it out.

Where the numbers sit on a Mercedes

Finding the FIN usually takes two looks. The windscreen base plate on the driver's side is visible from outside and is the fastest check on most cars built since the mid-1980s. The B-pillar carries the identification sticker, and on Mercedes that sticker often carries the paint code as well, printed as a three-digit code such as 197. Some cars carry the paint code on a plate near the radiator support.

There is a stamped number too, and it is the one that matters on accident and repair work. Mercedes stamps a number near the front floor or firewall, and older models often carry a dot-matrix number on the bulkhead. Stickers get replaced when a car is repaired, panels go with them, and stampings survive both. When a printed label and a stamping disagree, the stamping is usually the one that matches the registration document, and that is the point at which to stop ordering parts and start asking questions.

Our post on where the VIN sits on a vehicle walks the rest of the brands, and the paint code post covers what the three-digit Mercedes colour code does and does not tell you about a repaint.

• Windscreen base plate, driver's side: quickest read on most cars built since the mid-1980s
• B-pillar sticker: identification data and often the paint code
• Plate near the radiator support: paint code on some models
• Stamped number near the front floor or firewall: survives panel replacement
• Older models: dot-matrix number on the bulkhead

Reading a Mercedes part number once you have it

The catalog gives you a number, and it pays to recognise its shape before it goes on an order. The base Mercedes part number is a letter prefix followed by ten digits, written in groups: A 205 421 06 12. Our documented format for the Mercedes family reads the prefix as the part class, A for a standard production part and N for a norm part, and the digits as the model series, then the group, then the part identifier.

That base number grows on the work this page is about. Colour-keyed and trim parts add a short colour or upholstery extension on the end, so a longer string on a bumper cover or a door card is ordinary and expected. Anything that will not resolve in the catalog is worth reading back off its source before it goes on an order.

The leading digit block usually names a model series, which gives you a rough sanity check when a customer hands you a number and swears it fits their car. Treat a mismatch as a prompt to look the number up, never as a verdict. Numbers carry over between series, and 000-series numbers turn up right across the range, our own documented Mercedes example A 000 905 12 00 among them.

Norm parts deserve a mention of their own. The N prefix covers standardised fasteners and small hardware that appear across many models, so an N number on a diagram for a car you do not normally handle is unremarkable. The shapes for the other brands we cover sit on the part number formats post and on the OEM number lookup.

Where Mercedes EPC went, and what replaced it

People search for Mercedes EPC because that was the name of the software for a long time. The standalone application is gone. A Daimler notice reproduced on owners' forums explains it plainly: once the XENTRY Portal was running, technical support for the predecessor system could no longer be maintained, and the notice gives 14 December 2018 as the date access ended. Parts identification moved inside the portal.

What sits there now is XENTRY Parts Information. Checked on Mercedes' own B2B Connect site in August 2026, it is described as a FIN/VIN-based search for replacement parts, with detailed parts lists for Mercedes-Benz and Smart vehicles adapted to the vehicle's year of construction and equipment variant. It carries exploded views and real images showing where a component sits. It also lists the approved operating fluids with their specifications, and logging in needs multi-factor authentication. Van information sits within the Cars division.

It runs alongside XENTRY WIS for workshop and repair information and the XENTRY diagnosis products, which is where the three names people mix up come from.

Our Mercedes EPC system page covers the cluster, and the Mercedes-Benz EPC catalog page lists Smart under the same system, which is why one login covers both marques. The other half of that search is people hunting for an installed copy, and our Mercedes EPC download page sets out what a frozen bundle can and cannot still do.

What the card cannot tell you

The card stops at the factory gate, and the car has had owners since. A retrofit, a repair that fitted a non-original part, a resprayed panel in a colour the card never mentioned, a wheel package somebody swapped in 2014: none of it reaches a record written before the car was delivered. The card is evidence of one moment, and everything after that moment is yours to establish.

It also does not carry supersessions. A number that was current at build may have been replaced two or three times since, and only a live catalog knows the end of that chain. This is the most common way a data card leads someone astray. The code is right, the original number is right, and the number is no longer what the factory supplies.

And it says nothing about configuration. A control unit listed on the card may have been replaced, coded or paired at some point since, and a replacement unit may need setting up on a diagnostic tool before the car will accept it. Find that out while you are still writing the quote. Discovering it with the car in pieces costs you the job and the goodwill with it.

What it costs to reach the data

Mercedes sells this data to independent workshops directly. B2B Connect is the company's own shop for them, carrying XENTRY Parts Information alongside XENTRY WIS in the workshop range, with registration, multi-factor authentication and a choice between pay-per-VIN and a subscription. If the customer still has the printed card in the service booklet, that route costs nothing at all. So the honest question is what the access costs and how many badges you need it for.

For a shop that is Mercedes and nothing else, buying it from Mercedes is a sound answer. For a mixed workshop the arithmetic changes, because the same week contains a Golf and a Transit on the same ramp. A workshop like that needs fifty of these accounts and cannot run fifty accounts, which is the whole argument for a multi-catalog subscription. One VIN habit and one place to look, whatever badge is on the bonnet.

The route we sell is browser access to the manufacturer catalog itself, Mercedes among 52 official catalogs, with nothing to install on the workstation. Pricing is a $3 day pass, $50/month, or $500/year. VIN decoding on this site is free and stays free, which is enough to confirm you have the right car before you decide whether the rest is worth paying for.

The habit that pays for itself is the boring one. FIN first, catalog second, number third, supersession checked before the order goes out. It takes a minute longer than working from memory and it is the difference between a part that fits and a return you argue about later.