My '84 Euro TD has the VIN on the radiadior-support tag and firewall. It has no VIN tag on the door-pillar, windshield-pillar or dash.
The Euro VIN begins with WDB123. The typical US VIN starts with WDBA23 and is different from the firewall number.

First, Because I've read on these Forums about some havng serious problems getting insurance on a grey-market car, I ran the VIN by my insurance carrier. They had no problem with it

I did have a problem titling this car in Virginia because the previous title issuers (Washington DC and Maryland) dropped the ball and titled the car without including the WDB prefix. Virginia requires vehicles after 1980 have a certain minimum number of characters in the VIN.
The solution was the seller took the car to Maryland MVA and had a state-trooper inspect the VIN so MVA could issue him a corrected title.
The supervisor at Virginia DMV also told me that, while according to their computer database, there were some other nonconforming numbers in the Euro VIN, if Maryland issued a corrected title, that information would go on the NCIC database, and it would be accepted when I presented the seller's title to virginia DMV.

Indeed, when I went to title and register the TD, the lady behind the DMV counter did stare at her computer-screen for what seemed to be an awfully long time. But it finally went through and I got my title & tags.

Now in my case, except for the missing WDB prefix, all the numbers on this car and seller's title matched.

OTOH, a friend was interesed in an '85 Euro W124 300D, so when I suggested he first run the title VIN by his insurance carrier, it came back to an 86 W124 300E! It also didn't match the car's VIN.
My friend ran away from that one!

By the way, I saw an interesting car on eBay recently that claimed it had a 'dismantle' title (either from Nevada or Arizona - I'm not sure).
Is that the same as a salvage title or does that mean the car can only be scrapped?

Happy Motoring, Mark

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DrDKW