The World Manufacturer Identifier is the first three characters of a VIN, assigned under ISO 3779 and ISO 3780. The first two characters encode the country and region, and all three together identify the specific manufacturer.

How is the country decoded?

ISO 3780 assigns blocks of leading VIN characters to geographic regions. For example, codes starting with W are Germany, J is Japan, and 1, 4, and 5 are the United States. This tool matches your first two characters against those ranges.

Why are I, O, and Q never in a VIN?

The letters I, O, and Q are excluded from every VIN position because they are too easily confused with the digits 1 and 0. The tool strips them automatically so a mistyped character is ignored.

Does a matching WMI mean the car was assembled in that country?

It means the manufacturing plant that built the vehicle is registered in that country. A global brand may build the same model in several countries, each with its own WMI, so the country reflects the actual assembly plant.

Why is my manufacturer not listed?

The embedded table covers the most common 200-plus WMIs. Rare, regional, or recently issued identifiers may not appear even though the country range still resolves correctly. Use an official decoder for niche brands.

WMI Country & Manufacturer Lookup

Every VIN begins with a three-character World Manufacturer Identifier. This tool reads those three characters and tells you the country of manufacture, the brand, and the broad vehicle type — useful when you only have a partial VIN or want to verify where a vehicle was actually built.

How it works

The decode happens in two stages, both defined by international standard:

Country (characters 1-2). ISO 3780 divides the alphanumeric space into geographic ranges. Character 1 sets the continent (for example S-Z is Europe, 1-5 is North America, 6-7 is Oceania, 8-9 is South America), and characters 1-2 together pin down the specific country. The tool matches your pair against the full range table.
Manufacturer (characters 1-3). The complete three-character WMI is issued to an individual manufacturing plant. WBA is BMW in Germany, 5YJ is Tesla in the United States, JHM is Honda in Japan, and so on.

VINs never contain the letters I, O, or Q because they are confused with 1 and 0, so those characters are stripped from your input automatically.

Example and notes

A VIN beginning 5YJ3E1EA7JF resolves to country United States and manufacturer Tesla (electric passenger car). A VIN beginning WVWZZZ resolves to Germany / Volkswagen. If the country shows correctly but the manufacturer reads as unlisted, the brand simply is not in the embedded table — the country is still reliable. For an authoritative full decode including model year and plant, pair this with the NHTSA vPIC decoder.