2011 Golf TDI

How do you determine what year your car was built?

If you open the drivers door, there will be a decal on the door jam with the month and year of MFG.

Cars are assembled to a specific model year specification, regardless of actual date of assembly. This is determined by the 10th digit of the VIN, same as every other car since 1981.

Usually, the assembly date (month/year) is on the sticker on the door jam. But again, this does not necessarily reflect the model year of the car.

Interesting, than you. So that 10th digit only tells you the year, not month? I'll check the door when it stops raining

Cincojoe said:

Interesting, than you. So that 10th digit only tells you the year, not month? I'll check the door when it stops raining

Click to expand...

Yes, since cars are built to model-year-specific requirements. While not a hard and fast rule, usually August is the production cutoff month. So a July of 1998 car will be a 1998 model, while an August of 1998 car will be a 1999 model. However, since these model year requirements are in place well ahead of time so the car companies have plenty of advance notice to design in compliance, there is no reason why they cannot build a newer model year car, even a couple years out. This is why you find instances where an all-new model was designed around upcoming requirements, and they just went ahead and built them to that year's compliance. Like the 2012 model year Passats that were at the NAIAS in January, complete with valid VINs and a 'C' in the 10th spot.

Since currently the specifications for 2015 model year cars are likely all set in stone, any car maker could right now build a 2015 model year car, so long as it met the requirements. However, since the requirements likely will add cost, it is unlikely you'll see that as it would be more costly than necessary. This happened in 1995 with the Neon, that was all-new that year, and met all the 1996 requirements EXCEPT the evaporative emissions monitoring... Chrysler could have sold these cars as 1996 models, however they were able to save about $100 per car by leaving evap monitoring bits off the car and just selling them as 1995 models, as that model year did not require this equipment.