Hafei VIN Decoder

Decode any Hafei VIN free in seconds. Enter the 17-character vehicle identification number from your Hafei into the decoder above and get the model, year, engine, and body style it was built with, to the extent that information is available for this brand.

This page is the Hafei VIN hub: what’s known about Hafei’s WMI codes, a position-by-position guide to reading a Hafei VIN, where to find the VIN on the vehicle, and an honest look at who (if anyone) handles recalls now that the brand no longer builds cars under its own name.
A quick note on market coverage: Hafei is a Chinese manufacturer that was never sold new in the United States. It has no NHTSA registration, no US distributor, and no presence in NHTSA’s vPIC manufacturer database (we checked directly; the query returns zero results for “Hafei”). Documentation on the brand outside China is thin, and some details below, particularly an official WMI code, could not be confirmed from available English-language sources. Where that’s the case, we say so plainly rather than guess. The 17-character VIN structure itself is still the same worldwide ISO 3779 standard used by every carmaker, so the decoder above reads a Hafei VIN the same way it reads a Ford or Toyota VIN; it’s the brand-specific detail underneath that’s harder to pin down.

About Hafei, and its current status

Hafei Motor Co., Ltd. was founded in 1980 in Harbin, Heilongjiang province, as the automotive offshoot of a state-owned aircraft manufacturer, Harbin Aircraft Manufacturing Corporation (part of Aviation Industry Corporation of China, AVIC). Its earliest products were small vans and trucks built under license from Suzuki, based on the Suzuki Carry, sold under the “Songhuajiang” name (after the Songhua River that runs through Harbin) before the company switched to the Hafei badge in 2002.

Through the 2000s, Hafei built a run of small cars and minivans styled by the Italian design house Pininfarina: the Zhongyi cabover microvan (introduced 1999), the Lobo hatchback (2002-2011, sold elsewhere as the Naza Sutera in Malaysia and the Brio in Russia), and the Saibao compact sedan (2005-2012), using licensed Mitsubishi engines. By 2009 the company reported exports to roughly 40 countries. We found no evidence of a Hyundai or Fiat joint venture tied to Hafei specifically, and we’re not including that claim since we could not verify it; Hafei’s documented outside partnerships are with Suzuki, Mitsubishi, and Pininfarina.
Here is the most important fact for anyone trying to identify a Hafei-badged vehicle today: the brand is no longer independently active. Starting in 2009, as part of a Chinese government push to consolidate the domestic auto industry, Chongqing Changan Automobile began acquiring Hafei’s automotive assets, a deal formally completed in July 2010. Changan kept the Hafei name alive for a few more years, releasing at least one new model under its ownership, but sales collapsed from roughly 220,000 vehicles a year before the acquisition to about 21,000 by 2013, and Hafei increasingly functioned as a contract assembly plant for Changan-badged vehicles rather than a standalone brand. In 2015, Changan Ford (the separate joint venture between Changan and Ford) acquired the Harbin plant outright, and Changan announced the end of Hafei-brand vehicle production, converting the factory toward Ford-badged output; Ford Focus production began there in 2017. By around 2018, industry reporting generally describes Hafei as defunct as a standalone marque, folded into Changan’s broader operations, with no new Hafei-badged vehicles reported since.
In short: a vehicle with a Hafei badge was built before roughly the mid-2010s, by a company that no longer exists in the form that built it.

Hafei WMI codes (positions 1-3): what we could and couldn’t confirm

The first three characters of a VIN, the World Manufacturer Identifier (WMI), are assigned under ISO 3780 by SAE International, and every WMI issued is meant to appear in SAE’s registry. China-built vehicles generally carry a WMI beginning with L (the block SAE allocates to China), but we were not able to confirm a specific, sourced WMI issued to Hafei.

We checked directly:

This isn’t unusual for a brand that never sold new vehicles in the US: NHTSA’s vPIC database is built mainly from US-market registrations and manufacturer submissions, so a brand with no American distribution has little reason to appear in it. It does mean this page can’t hand you a confirmed WMI table the way our pages for US-market or larger global brands can. The decoder above will still parse a Hafei VIN’s structure, but treat any WMI-specific claim about Hafei you see elsewhere online, including on third-party VIN-lookup sites, with some skepticism unless it cites a primary source.

How to read a Hafei VIN: position by position

Every VIN built to the modern standard, Hafei included, follows the same ISO 3779 17-character structure used worldwide. The 17 characters split into three blocks:

Here’s what we can and can’t say about each block specifically on a Hafei:

Positions 1-3: World Manufacturer Identifier

Covered in the WMI section above: no confirmed Hafei-specific code, though an L-series prefix is consistent with a China-built vehicle generally.

Positions 4-8: Vehicle Descriptor Section (VDS)

On any VIN, these five characters encode the model line, body style, engine, and restraint system. Hafei’s lineup was varied for a small manufacturer, spanning the Zhongyi microvan, the Lobo hatchback, and the Saibao sedan family, the latter using licensed Mitsubishi 4G18/4G93 engines. We don’t have a decode table mapping specific VDS characters to these models; that data comes from manufacturer submissions, which for a defunct brand with no US presence are far thinner than for an active, US-market manufacturer.

Position 9: Check digit

The check digit is the single most important character in any VIN, Hafei’s included. It’s calculated from the other 16 characters using a fixed weighting table and modulo-11 math, and this part of the standard doesn’t vary by manufacturer or market. If even one character of a 17-digit VIN is mistyped or altered, the check digit won’t match, and a compliant decoder will flag it as invalid.

Position 10: Model year

The 10th character maps to a model year on a 30-year cycle under ISO 3779, identical worldwide. Given Hafei-badged production ran from roughly 2002 (when the brand name launched) to the mid-2010s, most genuine Hafei VINs should decode somewhere across these two ranges:

The letters I, O, and Q are never used in any VIN, Hafei included, because they look too similar to the digits 1 and 0.

Position 11: Assembly plant

The single character at position 11 normally identifies the specific factory. Hafei’s main production was concentrated at its Harbin plant, the same site later converted into Changan Ford’s Harbin Assembly Plant. We don’t have a sourced, manufacturer-confirmed table mapping position 11 characters to specific Hafei facilities, so we’re not presenting one.

Positions 12-17: Serial number

The final six characters are the production sequence number stamped on that individual vehicle as it came off the line. This part of the standard is universal and doesn’t depend on manufacturer-specific documentation.

Where to find the VIN on a Hafei

Where a genuine 17-character VIN exists on a Hafei-badged vehicle, it’s typically in the same places most manufacturers put it:

• Stamped on the chassis frame, usually near the engine bay
• Windshield or driver’s-side door jamb sticker, on vehicles from the 2000s onward
• Vehicle registration documents (in China, filed with local traffic authorities; in export markets, on the local registration paperwork)

China’s own 17-character VIN standard (GB 16735) phased in through the late 1990s and became fully mandatory in the early 2000s. Because Hafei’s earliest products, the Suzuki-based Songhuajiang-branded microvans, predate that standard, the very oldest Hafei-lineage vehicles may carry a shorter or non-standard chassis number rather than a full ISO VIN. For background on older, non-standard formats, see our classic car VIN decoder guide.

Recalls and safety information on a discontinued brand

This is the part of owning a Hafei that’s genuinely harder than owning a currently-produced car, and we’d rather say that plainly than paper over it. Hafei doesn’t exist anymore as an independent manufacturer that can run its own safety campaigns, and it never had a US distributor, so there’s no NHTSA recall history to check for a Hafei VIN. For vehicles registered in China, the relevant framework is China’s Regulation on the Administration of Recall of Defective Auto Products, in force since January 2013 and overseen by the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR). Whether SAMR holds active recall records tied specifically to Hafei-badged vehicles, and whether Changan, as the company that absorbed Hafei’s assets, is the point of contact for any such campaign, is not something we found a confirmed source for. Changan is the most plausible party to contact for parts or service history given the acquisition, but we’re not asserting a formal “manufacturer of record” relationship the way that can be documented for some other discontinued brands.

For Hafei-based vehicles sold outside China under other names, such as the Naza Sutera in Malaysia or the Brio in Russia, recall and safety oversight falls to that country’s own vehicle safety authority rather than any Chinese or US body.

If you own a Hafei-badged vehicle and want to check for known safety issues:

1. Decode the VIN with the tool above to identify the model and model year as precisely as the available data allows
2. If the vehicle is registered in China, check with SAMR’s recall channels directly, since Hafei-specific US or global databases don’t exist
3. Contact a Changan-affiliated service network for parts or technical support, since no dedicated Hafei service network remains

Frequently asked questions

Is Hafei still in business?

Not as an independent brand. Its assets were acquired by Changan Automobile Group beginning in 2009-2010, the brand kept building a shrinking lineup for a few more years under Changan ownership, and by around 2015 Changan had announced the end of Hafei-brand production, converting the Harbin factory to build Ford-badged vehicles instead. No new Hafei-badged vehicles have been reported since.

Was Hafei ever sold in the United States?

No. Hafei vehicles were never officially imported or sold new in the US, and the brand has no NHTSA registration. One Hafei-derived platform, the Saibao III sedan, was used as the mechanical basis for a low-volume American electric vehicle conversion, first sold as the Coda Sedan and later the Mullen 700e, but that was a US company’s own rebodied product, not a Hafei-branded export.

What is Hafei’s WMI code?

We could not confirm one. NHTSA’s vPIC database returns no results for Hafei, and no Hafei-specific WMI turned up in any SAE or ISO source we could verify.

Can I still get parts or service for a Hafei?

There’s no dedicated Hafei dealer or parts network anymore. Changan, which absorbed Hafei’s assets, is the closest thing to a corporate successor, and independent mechanics familiar with Chinese-market small cars are likely the most practical option depending on where the vehicle is located.

Is the Hafei VIN decoder free?

Yes. VinDecoderPlus decodes the standard ISO 3779 structure of any 17-character Hafei VIN free of charge, with no sign-up required. Because Hafei has no US market history and limited public manufacturer data, some model-specific fields may return less detail than they would for an active, US-sold brand.

Can a Hafei VIN be faked?

The 17 characters can be retyped, but the check digit at position 9 makes silent tampering difficult to pull off cleanly: any single-character change breaks the underlying math. That check still applies to a Hafei VIN. If you’re evaluating a Hafei-badged vehicle and something about the paperwork doesn’t add up, particularly given how little standardized reference data exists for this brand, our guide how to check if a car is stolen by VIN walks through the next steps.

Decode any Hafei VIN free

Type your 17-character Hafei VIN into the decoder at the top of this page. To learn more about VIN structure in general, see our guides:

• How to read a VIN number
• What every character in a VIN means
• Classic car VIN decoder (pre-1981)
• VIN decoder vs. vehicle history report