How a vehicle identity certificate is created at the Volkswagen AutoMuseum Foundation

Since 1940, beginning with chassis number 1 - 000 001 - the most important vehicle characteristics have been documented, initially in hand-written vehicle registers and beginning in 1955, on microfilmed Hollerith punch cards.

Every single vehicle characteristic has an individual code for model year, type and place of delivery. In decoding this information, AutoMuseum Foundation employees make use of historical technical Volkswagen documents like handbooks, parts lists, colour charts and prospects and, when in doubt, they check back with the technical departments in production. Considering the huge variety of models at Volkswagen, this is a very time-consuming undertaking. For model year 1979 alone, there were about 400 special finishes just for Transporters.

A three-member team of the Volkswagen AutoMuseum Foundation produces about 3,000 vehicle identity certificates yearly and, after processing documents concerning engine data and equipment packages, sends them to 70 countries throughout the world. The majority of the customer inquiries come from Germany followed by the USA, Great Britain and the Netherlands.