Why one automaker holds dozens of VIN prefixes

Most manufacturers in NHTSA's catalog hold a single code: 10,948 of 11,625. The big groups are different. General Motors LLC holds 108 three-character WMIs, more than any other company. NHTSA records one vehicle type for every code, and usually a small set of makes, so a group with many brands and vehicle types ends up with many codes.

The largest holders

Inside General Motors' 108 codes

GM's codes split by vehicle type into 37 for passenger cars, 36 for multipurpose passenger vehicles, 16 for trucks, 13 for incomplete vehicles (chassis) and 6 for buses. A brand can have separate codes per type: Chevrolet passenger cars use 1G1 and Chevrolet multipurpose vehicles 1GN. The rules across all of GM's codes name 313 models and 19 makes.

Subsidiaries hold their own codes

NHTSA lists each registering company separately. FCA US LLC holds 49 codes and FCA Canada Inc. another 37. Ford Motor Company holds 28, while its Canadian and Mexican companies appear as separate holders. Honda appears under 6 companies that hold several codes each, with 41 codes between them. To see everything a group holds, open each company's page; this site does not merge them, because the catalog does not say which companies belong together.

Retired codes stay in the list

Codes whose rules have ended stay listed. Of GM's 108 codes, 81 have decoding rules that end at a fixed model year. They remain in the catalog, so older VINs carrying them can still be decoded.

How the counts are spread

Between the giants and the single-code companies there is a thin middle. Two codes are held by 534 manufacturers, three by 67, and ten or more by only 21. Each manufacturer page on this site lists every code with its vehicle type, makes and model years.

Other groups, same pattern

The table shows how four other large holders split their codes across vehicle types. Each spreads its codes over several types, the same pattern as at General Motors.

Codes shared by brands push in the other direction: 355 three-character codes decode two or more makes.

Many codes, few models

A long list of codes does not always mean a long list of models. General Motors LLC pairs its 108 codes with 313 models. Fleetwood Enterprises, Inc. holds 25 codes, but the rules behind them name only 12 models, and Skyline Corporation holds 22 codes for 14 models. Mercedes-Benz AG has 23 codes and 14 models. When codes outnumber models, the model list on each code page is correspondingly short.

Across the whole catalog, 11,625 manufacturers share 13,012 codes, an average of 1.12 codes per holder. The average hides the shape of the distribution: the 10,948 single-code holders make up 94 percent of all holders, while 21 holders have ten or more codes. Counting three-character codes only, the 21 companies with ten or more of them hold 16 percent of all three-character codes.

For anyone reading a VIN, the practical consequence is simple. The holder behind a code is a specific registered company, not a brand or a group, and the code page names it exactly as NHTSA records it. The make, which is what most people mean by the manufacturer, is listed separately on each page, together with the other codes that decode the same make.

Counting by make instead of company

Counting codes per make gives a related but different ranking, because several companies can hold codes for the same make. Dodge is linked to 62 three-character codes, ahead of Chevrolet (43) and Honda (36). Each code page shows the make's other codes under other holders, which is the quickest way to follow one brand across companies and countries. Dodge's 62 codes alone are spread over 6 different holders.

Finding every company of a group

Because the catalog lists registering companies one by one, the same group name turns up many times. Counting holder names that contain the word, Toyota appears as 14 different companies, Honda as 10, Ford as 10 and Volvo as 10. The catalog does not record which of them belong to the same group, so this site lists them as separate holders. The list of vehicle makers sorts the profiled companies by the number of codes they hold.