The Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) on your car is a 17-character code that already contains most of what you'd type into a vehicle record: year, make, model, engine, body style, transmission, drivetrain, and sometimes the assembly plant.
Until now, logging a car in Vaultry meant typing all that twice — once from the title or registration, once into the form. With VIN decode, you type it once.
How it works
Open a new vehicle record. In the VIN field, enter all 17 characters (no spaces, no dashes — both I, O, and Q are excluded from VINs by design, so you don't have to worry about confusing them with 1, 0, and 9).
Tap Decode. Vaultry calls the NHTSA vPIC API — the same database the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration uses for recall lookups — and fills in:
- Year
- Make
- Model
- Body style (Sedan, Coupe, Pickup, SUV, etc.)
- Drivetrain (FWD, RWD, AWD, 4x4)
- Transmission
- Engine displacement and cylinders
- Fuel type
If a value comes back as a dropdown (like body style or drivetrain), Vaultry matches the NHTSA value to your existing option list. If it's a new value the form hasn't seen before, it's added so future records can use it too.
Free, no API key, no tracking
NHTSA's vPIC API is a US government open-data service. It's free, requires no registration, has no rate limits we've come close to, and doesn't track who's asking. Vaultry calls it directly from your browser. We don't proxy the request, store the VIN, or log the decode anywhere outside your own activity log.
What it doesn't fill in
VIN decode tells you what the vehicle is. It doesn't tell you:
- Current mileage — you have to read the odometer.
- Color — VINs don't encode trim or paint.
- Title status — clean, salvage, lien — you have to know.
- Specific trim package (Limited vs LX vs Touring) — sometimes VINs encode this, often not. Use the trim field for whatever the door sticker says.
- Current owner history — that's a Carfax / AutoCheck question, not a VIN-decode question.
Those still need your eyes on the vehicle and your hands on the paperwork.
Why we built this on NHTSA instead of a paid service
There are commercial VIN decode APIs that return more — paint color, trim package, original MSRP, even build-sheet PDFs. Most charge per lookup or require an account.
For a personal inventory tool, NHTSA covers the 80% that matters: identifying the vehicle. The remaining 20% (color, mileage, your specific trim) is faster to type than to pay for. We'd rather build the core feature on a free, durable, government-maintained source than add a monthly cost to your subscription for marginal data.
Where this is going
Vehicle records also support a Locked Fields rule: once a VIN is saved, it can't be edited without an admin override and a justification entered into the activity log. That's by design — a vehicle's VIN doesn't change. If yours did, something is wrong and it should be reviewed.
The next addition we're scoping is reading the VIN itself with the camera, from either the windshield plate or the door-jamb sticker. The slab-scanner code path already does barcode reads; extending it to OCR a VIN out of a small fixed-position photo is the same shape of problem.