Look up a vehicle manufacturer from just the WMI portion of a VIN using the NHTSA vPIC DecodeWMI endpoint
domain: vpic.nhtsa.dot.gov · 5 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Extract the WMI from VIN positions 1-3, or the extended 6-character WMI from positions 1-3 plus 12-14 for manufacturers who need it
Call the DecodeWMI action with either the 3-character or 6-character WMI value
Parse the manufacturer name and related fields from the response
Fall back to the full DecodeVin endpoint if a complete VIN is available, since it returns richer data than a WMI-only lookup
Respect vPIC's automated traffic rate-control mechanism when calling at volume
Known gotchas
A 3-character WMI is ambiguous for manufacturers who share prefixes across low-volume marques — those require the 6-character form (positions 1-3 + 12-14) to resolve correctly
vPIC applies automated rate control to high-volume callers, so bulk lookups should use the dedicated batch endpoint rather than looping single calls
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