VIN.
Every Mercedes carries its biography in seventeen characters. Enter a Mercedes-Benz, Mercedes-AMG, Mercedes-Maybach, smart or Unimog number and it will be read back to you — including the fourteen-digit chassis numbers stamped before 1981.
How the number reads.
Since 1981 the VIN has followed ISO 3779: three blocks that say who built the car, what it is, and which one it was.
Positions 1–3
World manufacturer identifier
The country and the company. WDB is Daimler-Benz AG, WDC and WDD the DaimlerChrysler and Daimler years, W1K the Mercedes-Benz AG of today. WME is smart; 4JG and 55S are the cars built in Vance, Alabama.
Positions 4–9
Vehicle descriptor
What the car is. European numbers spell the chassis type out in six digits — 129067 is a 500 SL. North American ones code it in letters and close with a check digit that has to agree with the rest of the VIN.
Positions 10–17
Vehicle identifier
Which car it is. North American numbers open with the model-year letter, European ones with the drive side; then come the assembly plant and the six-digit sequential number.
1954–1980
The chassis number
Before the VIN, Daimler-Benz stamped fourteen digits: three for the chassis type, three for the variant, two for the order type — left- or right-hand drive, CKD kit, gearbox — and six running numbers.
Read from the number alone. Mercedes-Benz reused descriptor codes over the years, so where the chassis type cannot be established from the VIN itself it is left blank rather than guessed.