WMI lookup — VIN manufacturer codes

The three characters that name the maker

Every VIN opens with a World Manufacturer Identifier — the first three characters, defined by ISO 3780 and administered nationally (in the United States, SAE International issues them). It is the part of a VIN that answers "who built this?" The first character fixes the broad region: 1–5 are North America, J Japan, K Korea, L China, S–Z Europe, 6–7 Oceania, 8–9 South America. The first two characters together narrow it to a country — WA through W0 is Germany, SA–SM the United Kingdom, 1/4/5 the United States, 2 Canada, 3 Mexico. The third character then, together with the maker, distinguishes a division or vehicle type: Ford is 1FA for US cars, 1FT for US trucks and WF0 for its German-built vehicles.

Why one maker holds many WMIs

A single manufacturer rarely has one code. Codes are tied to plant and country, so a global maker accumulates a handful: Volkswagen is WVW in Germany, 3VW in Mexico and 1VW at its Chattanooga plant in Tennessee, and the same physical model can carry different WMIs depending on where that specific car was assembled. There is a deliberate exception at the small end: a manufacturer building fewer than 500 vehicles a year is grouped under a shared WMI whose third character is 9, and the specific maker is then pinned down by positions 12–14 of the VIN — which is why a low-volume specialist won't resolve from the WMI alone. Because assignments have shifted over decades (defunct marques, mergers, new plants), a code seen on an older vehicle may map to a manufacturer that no longer exists.

Assignment country vs. plant country

A common misread: the country implied by the WMI is the country that assigned the code, not necessarily where the vehicle rolled off the line. The two usually agree, but the authoritative build plant is encoded later in the VIN (position 11) and returned by a full decode. This tool computes the region and country locally for an instant answer and resolves the manufacturer from a curated table; for any WMI outside that table it queries the free, official NHTSA vPIC database. To decode a whole VIN — make, model, year, body and engine — use the VIN decoder, and for the full anatomy of the 17 characters see the guide how to decode a VIN by hand.