Decoding VINs with an API

Today's post took a bit of a pivot. I decided to work on a demo idea I had created way back in March. As I worked on it, I ran into multiple roadblocks, and while that original idea for a demo may still see the light of the day, I figured I'd at least share something that did work. What's a VIN? A VIN is a vehicle identification number. It's a standard that dates back to 1954 and identifies a particular car by manufacturer, make, model, year, and a heck of a lot more. A VIN is 17 characters avoiding the letters O, I, U, and Q to avoid confusion with some numbers. You can break down a VIN into various components if you want - but would still need to know various lookup values, for example a manufacturer referred to as 1FT maps to Ford Truck. Decoding a VIN via API As part of the demo that didn't quite make it, I needed to decode a VIN value. I had a commercial service in mind but it had a pretty limited free tier (50 calls). Turns out, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration…