Do you know what your VIN is? You should!
It is one of the less talked about elements on your car, but your Vehicle Identification Number or VIN is arguably among the most important.
Particularly in a country like South Africa, where vehicle theft is commonplace, it is essential police are able to track a stolen car or motorcycle through its VIN. Very few, if any, vehicles are recovered without this information.
However there are a number of other ways in which a VIN can benefit the vehicle owner.
One of the more helpful aspects of the VIN is that it can be used to trace the history of a previously-owned vehicle, thereby providing valuable information to a prospective buyer.
There are numerous service providers in the country which offer a registration service which allows you to search a particular VIN. This information is able to tell you how many owners the car has had, if it was ever classified as a “bad buy” or whether it had ever been stolen.
The history can even show you whether the vehicle had ever been submerged in water or been involved in an accident or fender-bender.
For your friendly mechanic, the VIN is even more important, as he obviously needs to know more about the inner and outer workings than you do, particularly if it is a used vehicle.
In an unscrupulous practice, private sellers of used vehicles have been known to roll back the odometer to fool potential buyers into thinking the car is younger than it is, and in extreme circumstances, will even “flip” it when the odometer reading has reached maximum on the gauge.
Of course there is no getting away from the fact that a VIN does play an important role in bringing vehicle thieves to book. Not that your smarter criminal has not found ways to beat the system.
We have all seen the movies where the crafty carjacker switches the VIN from a stolen car with one obtained legally; well that happens in real life, too.
An interesting countermeasure to the rampant vehicle criminality is the South African-made “DataDot”, which at this stage applies to new vehicles only.
The VIN is laser-etched onto tiny particles, known as “microdots”, which are made of high-tech polyester or metallic substrate. Although locating the DataDots is easy, finding all of them for removal is virtually impossible.