VIN/Chassis Guide

David McGuire | 15/01/2021

Basic Searching

The #VC search function can be intimidating at first or if you haven’t used it in a while. With
practice it becomes simple. These steps should help remind you in the future.

The picture above shows the #VC format page. Enter the VIN number and the vehicle make.
Pay attention to the warning in red and yellow. If you do not enter a make, it will search stolen
vehicles only.

Our search has produced this list of results. The top record, 0103KLC is a black Vauxhall
Corsa. Between ‘CORS’ and the VIN is E. This means that PNC has found an exact match.
If you ever look at a list of results and there isn’t an ‘E’ beside one of them then you haven’t
found your vehicle.

1
Make not found

Sometimes when you enter what you think is a fairly straight forward brand into the make
field, it won’t recognise it. This is often because the DVLA have the make recorded slightly
differently Honda recorded as Honda (UK) not just Honda. To select Honda (UK) we just
need to type ‘4’ into the field below ‘HONDA’ just like below:

Once we have entered the right Make, it should find our vehicle like below:

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Make Groups

The image above shows that sometimes the DVLA computer will resort to ‘Make Not Found’
when the make is actually part of a large company with many subsidiaries like above. We call
this a Make Group. Select the one you think is most likely and press enter.

In this case, there is no ‘E’ so I don’t have a match. I can try the others in the Make group
one at a time from the data line by over typing (UK) with (EUROPE), see below:

When I run the search now, I get a better result, see below:

I have to do this for each of the entries in the Make group. Also consider companies that
share designs. Volkswagen is a good example as it owns Audi, Seat and Skoda and shares
designs amongst all four companies.

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Non Standard Makes
Manufacturers that make less than 5000 vehicles a year are generally considered as ‘Non
standard’ by the DVLA and don’t have their own make entry like Vauxhall, Honda or Ford.
On PNC we search for Non standard makes by using the Asterisk ‘*’ in the Make field.

It will ask us to confirm this by retyping it into the dialog box like below:

Once we have retyped it, PNC will search for Non standard vehicles only and it will find out
match like below:

That should be everything you need to know in order to run a successful search on #VC.

VIN/Chassis Guide 4