Enter the 17-character VIN of your ChangAn to see the factory basics. Free, with no registration.
Look on the dashboard, the driver's door frame or in the registration document.
Type all 17 characters. The letters I, O and Q are never used in a VIN.
See the factory basics for free, and order a full report for the history behind the VIN.
Type in a 17-character VIN and this free decoder reads what is encoded in it: the manufacturer, the model year and the country where the car was built. Our ChangAn data covers 16 models, among them BenBen, CS35, CS55, CS95, Eado, Lumin, UNI-K and UNI-T, with model years from 2004 to 2024. No registration is needed.
The decoder reads only the VIN, so it cannot tell you about accidents, mileage, theft or previous owners. That information comes from a paid vehicle history report.
The first three characters are the WMI, the manufacturer code. For ChangAn we recognise four of them: LPA, LS5, LVR and LVS. All four belong to China, so a VIN that starts with one of them decodes to a car built there. Our list is not complete, and the codes shown here are simply the ones we recognise for the brand.
Characters 4 to 8 are the descriptor section, which the manufacturer uses to describe the vehicle. Character 9 is the check digit. North America requires it, while many European VINs fill that position differently. Character 10 is the model year, character 11 the plant, and characters 12 to 17 the serial number. VINs in this 17-character form exist for cars built since 1981, and the letters I, O and Q are never used.
A practical example: a VIN beginning with LS5 and having L in position 10 points to China and model year 2020. The same letter was also used for 1990, but that falls outside the 2004 to 2024 range of our ChangAn data. At the other end of that range, 2004 is shown by the digit 4 and 2024 by the letter R.
Every VIN has six parts. This is what each of them means.
| Part | Characters | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| WMI | 1 to 3 | World manufacturer identifier: who built the vehicle and where |
| VDS | 4 to 8 | Vehicle descriptor: model, body type and engine, as set by the manufacturer |
| Check digit | 9 | Control value that helps confirm the VIN is valid |
| Model year | 10 | Code for the model year |
| Plant | 11 | Code for the assembly plant |
| Serial | 12 to 17 | Production sequence number of this vehicle |
On the driver's side, visible through the windshield.
On a sticker on the door frame or the edge of the door.
Printed in the vehicle registration or title.
Stamped on the firewall or the frame on many models.
A VIN is built from six parts, and each one says something about the vehicle. Our guides explain how to read it and what it can and cannot tell you.
Enter the 17-character VIN and see the factory basics in seconds.
Look at your registration document first. On the car itself, the VIN is commonly stamped or printed at the lower corner of the windscreen on the driver's side and on a sticker in a door frame.
The first three characters are the WMI, which identifies the manufacturer and the country. We map LPA, LS5, LVR and LVS to ChangAn, and all four are assigned to China.
Look at the 10th character. For example, K means 2019, L means 2020 and M means 2021, while the digit 4 means 2004. Our ChangAn data covers model years 2004 to 2024.
It cannot show accidents, mileage, theft records or the number of owners, because a VIN does not contain any of that. It only tells you what was fixed when the car was built.
Make sure the VIN on the car matches the one in the documents and that it has exactly 17 characters with no I, O or Q. Then compare the model year letter in position 10 with the year the seller states.