How old is my caravan?
Type the VIN or NCC mark from the caravan to read the maker and model year it stands for, or why it cannot say.
Touring caravans built in the UK by National Caravan Council (NCC) members since 1992 carry a 17-character CRiS VIN. From 1987 to 1991 some makers used a shorter NCC mark instead. Type either one below.
The number is read in your browser. It is not sent to us, added to the page address or stored.
Type the number
Where to find the number
The Caravan and Motorhome Club's identification guide puts it on the nearside (left-hand) A-frame or chassis member, on caravans from both eras.
Read it off the caravan yourself, not from an advert or a photo. Of 39 caravan VINs we collected from dealer and auction pages, 8 were not valid as written: an O typed for a zero, too many or too few characters, or a wrong maker's code.
How the year is read
The first three characters of a VIN are the maker's code. The page names the maker from the codes in the Club's guide.
The guide marks the thirteenth character as the year. We checked that against 29 VINs on dealer and auction pages that gave the caravan's year separately. On all 22 of them from Bailey, the Swift group, Lunar and the Elddis group, the year was the tenth character, and the thirteenth was part of the serial number or a model code.
So the page gives a year only for VINs that start SGB (Bailey), SGD (Swift, and the Sprite, Abbey and Ace caravans that carry Swift's code), SGL (Lunar) or SGE (Elddis, and Compass and Buccaneer caravans from their Explorer Group years).
For every other maker it names the maker and gives no year. We have not seen enough of their VINs with a known year to say which character holds it, and reading the wrong one gives a year that looks right and may be wrong. Hobby VINs, for example, keep the year at neither the tenth nor the thirteenth character.
The year codes
Each model year has a letter or digit: N, P, R, S, T, V, W, X and Y for 1992 to 2000, 1 to 9 for 2001 to 2009, A to H and J for 2010 to 2018, K, L and M for 2019 to 2021, then N, P, R, S, T and V for 2022 to 2027. The letters I, O, Q, U and Z and the digit 0 are never used.
The codes come round every 30 years, so N stands for 1992 and 2022, and V for 1997 and 2027. Where a code could mean either, the page gives both: the caravan in front of you will show which.
Caravans from 1987 to 1991
An NCC mark is two digits for the year, a two-letter maker's code, then a serial number: 87 AB 007878 reads as an ABI from 1987.
Coachman is one maker this page can read only from an NCC mark. The Club's guide gives no VIN maker's code for it.
Before 1987 there was no shared system, only each maker's own, so there is nothing for this page to read.
What the number does not tell you
It tells you the maker and model year the number stands for. It does not show that the number belongs to the caravan in front of you, that there is no finance owing on it, or that it does not match a theft report.
Check the number on the caravan against the seller's paperwork, and ask how long they have had it.
A caravan built or registered abroad may carry a VIN this page cannot read. If the page cannot read a number, that alone does not mean the number is false.
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Each was read on 27 September 2026.