VIN numbers, 1979–81

In October 1979, partway through the model year, Triumph replaced commission numbers with VINs under the international standard. Spitfires built from that point carry a VIN and no commission number.

This is why the registry keeps the VIN cars as their own series rather than continuing the FH sequence: the numbering restarts under a different scheme, and model-year labels do not track cleanly against it.

Anatomy of the number

The late-Spitfire VIN runs five letters, one digit, two letters, then six digits:

TFADW 5 AT 009898
│     │ │  │
│     │ │  └── sequential build number
│     │ └───── model / market code
│     └─────── steering and overdrive
└───────────── model prefix

TFADW5AT009898 is the last Spitfire built.

The steering and overdrive digit

The single digit after the five-letter prefix is the most useful character to know, because it describes the car rather than the sequence:

Digit	Steering	Overdrive
1	Right-hand drive	No
2	Left-hand drive	No
5	Right-hand drive	Yes
6	Left-hand drive	Yes

The decoder reads this digit for you.

What is not decoded here

The five-letter prefix varies across late cars — TFADW and TFVDW both appear — and the two letters before the sequence carry model and market information. This registry has not sourced a position-by-position table against a primary record, so it does not publish one. Guessing at the remaining characters would produce confident wrong answers, which is worse than an honest gap.

For any individual car, a British Motor Heritage certificate is the authoritative answer.