Automotive tea leaves - deciphering your car's VIN code

Tasseographers divine a person's fate from tea leaf patterns discarded from a finished cup.  Less messy and more useful is the divination of a pre-owned car's history from the patterns in its vehicle identification number (VIN).
Like most other big-ticket item purchased, a car has an identification number.  Since the 1981 model year, this VIN has been a string of 17 characters that, when deciphered, provide insights into the vehicle's manufacture and history.
The VIN is also used by law enforcement to verify stolen cars and parts once they've been recovered.  Service shops use VIN's to correlate installed engine, transmission and brake systems with replacement parts and for proper maintance.  Auto manufactures rely on VINs to recall defective models.  And you can't insure or register your car without presenting its VIN.
Usually, you can retrieve a VIN by looking in one of three easy-to-find locations:

• at the corner of the driver's side dashboard where it meets the windowshield;
• on the sticker that's affixed to the driver's side doorjamb;
• on a plate bolted to the firewall (under the hood).

Neverless, why 17 characters and what do they mean?  How much information can be revealed by decoding those 17 digits? Plenty.

World manufacturer identifier
The first three digits stand for the World Manufacturer identifier.  Position one represents the nation of origin or the final point of assembly.  VINs of cars made in the U.S. start with 1, 4 or 5.  Canada is 2, Mexico is 3, Japan is J, Korea is K, England is S, and Germany is W.  The second character identifies the specific manufacturer (e.g., A for Audi, B for BMW, L for Lincoln).  The third digit stands for the vehicle type or manufacturing division (e.g. passenger car, light truck).
Vehicle descriptor section
The six digits from positions four through nine comprise the Vehicle Descriptor Section.  The first five characters reveal the model, body type, type of restraint system, transmission type and engine code.  The ninth character is a "check" against fraudulent, invalid VINs.  Based on a mathematical formula developed by the Department of Transportation, it is included as a security feature.
Vehicle identifier section
The final eight digits, positions 10 through 17 constitute the Vehicle identifier Section.  Position 10 represents the model year.  The letters B to X (without letter I, O, Q, U or Z) sequentially correspond to the model years starting with 1981 and ending with 2000.  Model years between 2001 and 2009 were designated with numbers 1 to 9.  Model year 2010 returned to an alphabetical sequence beginning with A.  The 11th digit indicates the manufacturing plant that assembled the vehicle.  This digit is proprietary to the respective manufacturer.  The final six characters in positions 12 through 17 stand for the production sequence number, which identifies your car as it moved along the assembly line.
Short cut
If you enjoy devoting time to reading tea leaves or solving acrostic puzzles, you can decipher car codes to amaze and entertain family, friends and neighbors.  However, if time is tight, and you still want to impress with your essoteric intellect, type a VIN into the website http://www.decodethis.com/.  In a few moments, you'll have a full translation of the 17 digits.
Practical use?
Typing a VIN into an online vehicle-history-report website (e.g. Carfax.com, Autocheck.com, VINcheck.org) will produce a summary of the vehicle's predigree.  (Carfax.com and Autocheck charge for the service but provide fuller information than VINcheck.org, whose report is free.)  If you are buying a used car, these tools offer a dimension of security not previously available to past generations.  Besides giving an honest snapshot of a car's life, a VIN not readily supplied by the car's seller could tip you off to the perpetration of a scam.  Avoiding such and finding a reliable, trustworthy means of transportation through its VIN is a fortune that your next finished cup of tea may confirm.