Serials - the pattern?

Well I suppose we haven't had this question for a little while....

http://www.nwrfca.org/faq/vin.htm

 

Hi, Jonas...

There is no X in the fourth place of the VIN for any variant of the 360. The X should be a Y, and someone, somewhere, made a mistake. If you have a picture of this X on the VIN plate, I'd love to see it - because that means that the mistake came from the homeland.

There is no pattern to serial numbers other than the fact that they're consecutive. In the earliest days, racecars got even numbers only; then, when road cars were built, they were given odd numbers only. It wasn't until serial number 75000 (a Testarossa if I'm not mistaken) that road cars started receiving both odd and even numbers consecutively.

Dinos only received even serial numbers, and they were not part of the racecar sequence; they had their own sequence (except for the two Dinos with odd serial numbers, but that's another story).

You won't be able to guess what model Ferrari comes next just by the serial number; but if you have the beginning of the VIN (i.e., ZFFYR51B), then you can tell that it's a European 360 Modena. Even then, the VIN won't tell you the car's color. Only in some cases (400i, 412, 456 and 456M, and California) can you decipher the car's transmission type.

I don't get here much lately, but feel free to e-mail me ([email protected]) if you have questions on VINs and I should be able to tell you what model Ferrari goes with that VIN.

To start you off, here are some basics: A Ferrari VIN will always start off with ZFF - always (except in the case of a handful of 308 GT4 Dinos, but that's another different story). The eighth character of the VIN will tell you its original market. So, for example, ZFFYT53B is a 360 Spider that was made for the European market; ZFFYU51A is a 360 Modena made for the US market; ZFFXR41C is a 355 Berlinetta made for the RHD (right hand drive) market (like the UK, Ireland, some Asian countries, etc.); ZFFXR48D is a 355 Spider made specifically for Australia.

In earlier cars (i.e., the Testarossa), ZFFSA17S tells you that the car was made for Sweden or Switzerland (though they no longer make cars specifically for Switzerland; the Swiss now get a B just like most of Europe, as is, I'm pretty sure, the case with Sweden). Denmark, to my knowledge, gets, and has always gotten, a B.

There are certain letters that are not used in VINs: I, Q and V; X is only used on (some) racecars and (some) one-offs and (some) prototypes. The 360 Challenge cars, for example, all have B VINs, as if they were built for the European market. But F430 Challenge cars, FXXs and 599 XXs all have Xs in the VINs instead of Bs.

I hope this helps; feel free to e-mail me if you have any other questions.

 

I forgot to mention that one of our very own members, Edvar van Daalen, has a site on which you can find lots of interesting information about Ferrari VINs. Just go to red-headed.com, click the picture to get in, click Articles at the top left, and then click 'Decoding the VIN' at the very bottom of that page.

 

If I'm not mistaken, the letter 'O' is never used so as not to mistake it for the number '0'

 

That is correct.