Buying a car imported from the US or Canada: what the VIN tells you

Every year hundreds of thousands of cars leave North America for Europe, the Gulf states, Poland, the Baltics, Ukraine, Georgia and Central Asia. Many are bought at salvage and wholesale auctions, repaired somewhere along the way and registered in their new country with a fresh, clean-looking document. The local registration tells you nothing about that past. The VIN does - because the records were created in the United States or Canada and stayed there. This guide shows how to read an import's VIN, what to expect from its history, and how to spot the cars that were written off before they were exported.

The first three characters: where the car was built

The first character of a 17-character VIN identifies the region and country of manufacture; the first three together (the WMI, world manufacturer identifier) name the manufacturer and plant group.

• 1, 4, 5 - United States (1HG = Honda USA, 1FT = Ford trucks, 4T1 = Toyota USA, 5YJ = Tesla).
• 2 - Canada (2T1 = Toyota Canada, 2HG = Honda Canada, 2G1 = General Motors Canada).
• 3 - Mexico (3VW = Volkswagen Mexico, 3N1 = Nissan Mexico).
• J - Japan; K - South Korea; W - Germany; S - United Kingdom; V - France/Spain; Z - Italy; Y - Sweden/Finland.

Two things follow. First, a car that starts with 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 was built in North America and almost certainly spent its early life there; it will have North American records. Second - and this surprises people - a car that starts with W or J can also be an import from the US: a German-built BMW sold new in California has a W VIN and a full American title history. The VIN prefix tells you where it was built, not where it was sold. The history records tell you where it lived. The VIN decoder reads the WMI and the rest of the number - year, make, model, engine, plant - for free, before you pay for anything.

What North American records exist, and what they show

Cars titled in the United States leave a trail in several systems that a PriorMile report pulls together:

• Official title and brand records - every title issued, the state, and every brand: salvage, rebuilt, flood, junk, lemon, not-actual-mileage. A car exported after a total loss will almost always carry a salvage or junk brand from its last US state.
• Insurance and accident records - total-loss declarations, claims with dates and damage descriptions.
• Auction listings with photos - this is the section that matters most for imports. Salvage auctions photograph every lot from several angles before sale; the photos show exactly what the car looked like on the day it was sold for export: deployed airbags, crushed front ends, flood lines, hail dents, missing wheels.
• Odometer readings - at each title transfer, inspection, service visit and listing, in miles.
• Recalls - open safety campaigns, matched to the VIN.
• Export records - some reports include a customs or port record showing when the car left.

The sample report on this site is a US-titled car of exactly this kind: a 2003 Honda Accord with 109 records - seven titles across Pennsylvania, Maryland, DC and Virginia, eleven accident and damage records, 67 odometer readings, a total-loss record dated 24 August 2018, and seven dealer and auction listings, five of them with photos. That is what a full American trail looks like before a car is put on a ship.

The report is strongest for cars that were titled in the US or Canada from new. For a car sold new in Europe and never registered in North America, the VIN will decode, recalls will show, and the history sections will be thin - the free preview shows the record count in each section before you pay, so you will see that immediately.

Reading an import's report: the five questions

1. What was the last US title? Look at the last title record before the export date. A clean title, a normal odometer and a private or dealer sale is the good case. A salvage or junk brand with an insurance total-loss record is the common case for auction exports. A junk brand ("certificate of destruction") means the car could never be legally registered again in the US; it is sold strictly for parts - and exported anyway.

2. What did it look like at auction? Open the auction listing and its photos. Compare them with the car in front of you, panel by panel. A front-end collision with deployed airbags on a car now shown with a perfect front bumper means the front structure was repaired, and you want to know how (and whether the airbags were replaced with real ones or the warning light was simply disabled). The hammer price is useful too: a car that sold at auction for a fraction of its value was sold as a wreck.

3. Do the miles add up? American readings are in miles; the dashboard may have been converted, or the cluster replaced. Convert the last recorded reading (miles × 1.609) and compare it to what the odometer shows now. A cluster that shows fewer kilometers than the last US reading in miles is a rollback. Also look at gaps: a two-year hole between the last US reading and the first local registration is normal (shipping, repair, customs); a reading that goes backwards is not. The sample report is a warning about how ordinary this is: four of its 67 readings go backwards, the largest by 124,307 miles, and Virginia branded the car "Odometer: Not Actual" in March 2019 as a result.

4. Is the brand history consistent? A salvage brand followed by a rebuilt inspection in a US state, then export, tells you the car was repaired there. A salvage brand followed by export within weeks means it was repaired after it arrived - by whoever bought it at auction. The second case is far more common and the repair quality is unknown.

5. Are there open recalls? Recall repairs are free at franchised dealers in the country of sale. Outside North America, a dealer may or may not honor a US recall on a gray-market import; ask before you buy, and take the campaign number from the report with you.

Prices, paperwork and the numbers in the report

Prices in the report are in US dollars; mileages in miles. A quick rule of thumb for the auction price: multiply by the exchange rate, add shipping, duty and VAT for your country, and repair. If the asking price today is not much above that sum, the repair budget was small.

Paperwork to ask the seller for: the US title or salvage certificate (the brand is printed on it), the bill of lading or export declaration (shows the export date, which should come after the last US record), and the customs clearance in the destination country. If the seller cannot produce the US title, the report's title section is the only record you will get.

The three patterns to recognize

• The honest import. Clean US title, normal mileage curve, no brands, one or two dealer listings with showroom photos, exported by a dealer or a private owner. These exist and they are good value; the report will look boring.
• The repaired wreck, disclosed. Salvage brand, total-loss record, auction photos of the damage, sold at a price that reflects it. Whether it is a good purchase depends entirely on the repair; budget for an inspection on a lift, paint-depth checks and an airbag-system scan.
• The washed wreck. Salvage or junk brand in the US, a clean local registration, no mention of damage in the listing, asking price close to an undamaged car. The report is how you tell this one from the first pattern. The seller will often say the car "had light damage". The auction photos will tell you whether that is true.

Before you go and see the car

Run the free preview first: it shows the decoded car, the build country from the WMI, and how many records sit in each section - title, accidents, odometer, auction listings - before you pay. If the preview shows a brand or an auction listing, buy the report and read the photos before you travel. If the counts are zero across the board for a car that supposedly came from the US, ask the seller for the US title and the export papers; either the VIN is wrong or the car's history is not what the listing says.