When I put my VIN into the decoder tool it apparently decodes everything correctly as the descriptions match the physical car. But at the bottom there's this footnote "Unfortunately we have not been able to fully decode your VIN". Any idea why I get this message and which field(s) can't it decode correctly?

I didn't realise there was a VIN Decoder until I read your post!

There was/is a report button at the bottom of the page when I looked at it just now?

You could try manually decoding the VIN using the information from the XPart epc which is duplicated on Rimmers web catalogue: https://rimmerbros.com/c/MG-Rover-200-C ... nformation - the VIN information for the earlier pre-1995 R8s starts about half way down the page, but the section related to the 1996-on R8 models is about three quarters of the way down the page.

If you work through that section with your own VIN, you may be able to see which bit the club decoder isn't able to find.

The issue will probably be the trim level (6th character of VIN), as the source of VIN data used is a bit vague for this (plus Rover had the habit of using the same character for different model descriptions over the years - eg M was used for both 'S' and 'SE' R8 models). Unfortunately the trim level decoder is most accurate for earlier cars, and gets a bit vaguer for the later cars. I designed the decoder to err on the side of caution, so if the result could not be guaranteed 100% as being correct the warning message is displayed - but it does not necessarily mean the result is actually incorrect. I hope that makes sense!

Colonel Mustard wrote: ↑Sun Jun 29, 2025 10:57 am The issue will probably be the trim level (6th character of VIN), as the source of VIN data used is a bit vague for this (plus Rover had the habit of using the same character for different model descriptions over the years - eg M was used for both 'S' and 'SE' R8 models). Unfortunately the trim level decoder is most accurate for earlier cars, and gets a bit vaguer for the later cars. I designed the decoder to err on the side of caution, so if the result could not be guaranteed 100% as being correct the warning message is displayed - but it does not necessarily mean the result is actually incorrect. I hope that makes sense!

It makes perfect sense - the decoder can only be as accurate as the Rover source data. And thank you for creating the decoder.

Rimmers (with thanks to Evil C for the link) describe Trim as "Class" and show that the MY '96 On cars had 2 codes for Tommys "W" and "X", and "X" was shared with the Tourer which also used "Y". Tommys only had one Trim level for each engine size/type, making the Class info superfluous data for them. The SE Tommys broke that relationship as the short-lived 216SE Tommy had trim (spoiler, wheels & radio) from the 220 Turbo in 1995, and the '98 MY 1.6SE had trim (front fogs, wheels, spoiler and radio) from the 1.8VVC. Would "X" have been used by Rover to indicate "SE" models for Tommys (mine is a '98 MY "SE" with the "X"), and possibly Tourers and even Cabbys as well?

Anyway thank you to all for your help.