Old Suzuki Swift VINs n’ Things
I was trying to check the year on my all powerful Suzuki Swift (in case it was different from the year of registration), and found that the usual place on in the VIN for working out the year is helpfully 0 (it’s usually a letter).
It proved hard to find any information on what the format indicated for the 1993-2003 swifts, but I did find this (google translated) Hungarian site, appropriately enough as it seems the cars were built over in Hungary, which is packed with useful bits and pieces. The two most useful codes are the VIN and the model number, the VIN can be found at the back of the engine compartment, while both are printed on a sticker on the cover of the spare wheel well.
The VIN looks something like TSMMAA35S00860000 and doesn’t really seem to follow the normal VIN rules. The first three characters represent the manufacturer, in this case Magyar Suzuki. The fourth letter always seems to be M as well, but the fifth and sixth give you the body style, AA for 3 door, AB for 5 door and AH for 4 door. The next two characters related to the engine, 35 for 1.3, 44 for 1.0 and 14 for 1.6 (the engine codes themselves might identify variations, e.g. G13BA for the 8v G13BB for the 16v). This is followed by S00, then the unique identifier. This can be used to determine the year (from the same site):
1992 – 100000+
1993 – 100922+
1994 – 114286+
1995 – 133811+
1996 – 250000+
1997 – 269289+
1998 – 333054+
1999 – 399172+
2000 – 530016+
2001 – 818529+
2002 – 876161+
2003 – 920516-933375
The model code identified a few more bits and pieces. It should be nine characters long and look something like HEJ534B02. The first character is the body, H for hatchback, S for sedan. The second character gives the type, E for Swift. The third gives the numbers of doors, A – 3 door/2 seat, L – 4 door, F – 5 door, J – 3 door/five seat. The next two give the engine combination, 33 – 1.0 manual, 35 – 1.0 automatic, 53 1.3 manual, 55 1.3 automatic, 63 1.6 manual, 65, 1.6 automatic. The sixth character gives the edition, e.g GLS, GLX etc, represented by a character from 2 to Z. The seventh indicates the series, A – 1st, B – 2nd, C – 3rd, E or F – 4th. The 8th and 9th give the market it was made for, eg 02 for the UK. There’s a complete list on the hungarian site – all credit to the author for putting the work in to list all this out!