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VIN: The 17-character code that runs the automotive world
How VINs encode everything from check digits to 565 submittals, and why the NHTSA's database is the only comprehensive public vehicle registry on Earth
In 1979, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration faced a problem: how do you track 100+ million vehicles across 50 states when every manufacturer uses different serial number schemes? It was a compressed database record, a mathematical validation system, and a regulatory framework that would process 17 million new vehicles annually while maintaining backward compatibility for decades. A hierarchical addressing system (WMI → VDS → VIS) Mathematical error detection in a human-readable format Extensible encoding that accommodates new vehicle types Global scalability with local flexibility Backward compatibility maintained for 40+ years
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