Rover 200 & 400 Owners Club

Can anyone de code this vin number. It doesn't look right for the car. Thanks. SAXXWWCMJBD903719

R8 216 Coupe with Honda D16Z2 (SOHC) engine and 4 speed automatic gearbox.

Thanks for your help

So what is the car? Does it match the VIN?

i was originally trying to find a build date, but hit a wall when the vin number kept coming up as a 1981 car, not possible on a coupe. still trying to find the build date

Day971 wrote: ↑Tue Jul 01, 2025 11:34 pm i was originally trying to find a build date, but hit a wall when the vin number kept coming up as a 1981 car, not possible on a coupe. still trying to find the build date

Have you tried using the Club's VIN decoder? It works for my Coupe, returning the MY as '98 which is correct as the car is a 1.6 SE (Series 2) which was introduced for MY '98.

You can access the Club's VIN decoder here https://rover200.org.uk/cars/vin1

The only area where it doesn't quite work is on the Trim. That's probably because Coupes only had one level of Trim for each engine size, unlike other 200 Series models where you could have different levels of trim for the same engine size.

Day971 wrote: ↑Tue Jul 01, 2025 11:34 pm i was originally trying to find a build date....

You can't find the actual build date from decoding the VIN; that will only give you the model year. The model year applies from when new revisions were applied on the production line (often as early as September/October the preceding calendar year), and is given by the 10th digit of the VIN sequence. If there were no model year revisions, the same date code continues to apply in subsequent years. I am unsure how the codes for this work for cars earlier than 1998, but from 1998-on, the model year followed a set code across the whole Rover range for each model year

The only way you will find the actual build date is from the factory build records, and I don't know whether they are available (or if they even still exist?) - there seems to be a dead area with nobody really knowing what happened to all the build records from the BMW era - Gaydon have the earlier records, and some of the MG Rover era records (apart from the Rover 25 and 45) have surfaced and are accessible to specific owners clubs.

Why do you need the build date anyway? Surely what is more relevant is the Model Year.

Also there is a natural division for the Coupe between the Honda D16 and Rover T Series engined era (92/3-95/6) = Series 1, and the Rover K 1.6 & 1.8 engined/"Bubble" dash era (96/7-97/8) = Series 2.

hi Coupe fan, thanks for your comments. Are you saying that the honda engined coupes, even auto ones, were only made up till June 1995

Yes, only until May/June 1996.