Build date

[coolman]

Salaam I have an A5 audi and wanted to know the exact build date of my car for some records I am preparing. I asked one of my other audi-owning acquaintances and they said that it can be "De-coded" from the vehicle's identification number and specification sheet. I want to know exactly how to do that. If not too much of trouble, can someone help me?

[karan]

Do you have these both at hand? The VIN and specs sheet? I don't really knw which A5 you have so it would either be in the dashboard or if there is a display on the driver's side .. you can find it here. the specs sheet is usually stuck to a door jam.

[coolman]

Okay i didnt't know about the specs sheet but i had the VIN number which didnt have any direct info about it and i was wondering how I could retrieve the build date from that. Okay so where do i go from there?

[raj]

There are so many free vin decoder online, just google them and punch your VIN number. It will tell you build date, engine, which factory its built, full option or not and lot of other details.

Secondly if car is registered here in Dubai then every mulkia (registration card) carry that year of manufacturing. I assume you want to double check the car before buying, which is very good as some clever or novice seller who bought car in Oct they love to call the next year model and i am sure if you caught them, then this is the same explanation you will get....I bought car in 2005 Oct Nov and bla bla so its actually 2006 model..... Yeah right!

[karan]

If you want to cross-check the model year from the VIN number then below is how you can do it... otherwise the specs sheet is pretty much all you need, since the build date is mentioned on it. the VIN number just confirms the model year. the tenth character of the VIN gives you the model year.

1997 is V

1998 is W

1999 is X

2000 is Y

2001 is 1

2002 is 2 etc

Hope this helps. By the way wouldn't you knw these details at the time of purchase?

[coolman]

thanks for everything ... got the date. Sorry I forgot to mention that I bought it from another person meaning it was second hand and got majority of the details then but didn't recall what he said. i wanted to cross check what was provided on the mulkia.