SpareRadar Nissan Qashqai GCC spec check

Nissan Qashqai: reading the VIN

The Qashqai is the car that shows most plainly why the tenth character of an export Nissan VIN cannot be a year.

Runs the free GCC spec check on your own vehicle. Nothing is stored against your name.
Is a Nissan Qashqai GCC spec?
The honest answer, before anything else on this page.

GCC specification is decided per vehicle, not per model. Two cars of the same model and the same year, built in the same factory in the same week, can go to different markets. So no page can tell you whether yours is a Gulf car, and this one does not try. What it can do is show you exactly what your own VIN encodes and where that stops.

Position 10 is a destination code on this car. U covers Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, A is Australia and general export, and Z is the rest of the world. U is the value a Gulf car carries, and because it also covers Europe it narrows the answer without settling it.

What this decoder reads from a Nissan Qashqai VIN
Specific to this model, not to the brand.

The Qashqai is half of the pair that makes the destination-code argument unanswerable. A 2003 Patrol Y61 and a 2012 Qashqai J10 both carry the letter U at position 10: one character, nine model years apart, on two entirely different cars. If that position were a year code, one of those two would be wrong by a decade. It is not a year code, it is a destination, and U covers Europe, the Middle East and North Africa together. The J10 is also sold as the Dualis in some markets, which is why the decoder reports both names rather than choosing.

Codes this decoder resolves
Chassis codes the decoder resolves.
CodeModelChassisBodyEngineBuilt
J10Qashqai / DualisJ10SUV2006-2013
J11QashqaiJ11SUV2013-2021
How a Nissan VIN is laid out
Summary. The full explanation of each position is on the Nissan page.
7 to 9
The chassis code, spelled out literally
9
Not a check digit on the export layout
10
A destination code, not a model year
What the VIN cannot tell you here
Stated because a decoder that never says this is not worth trusting.
  • No model year on the export layout.
  • No engine and no trim.
  • The J12, the current generation, is not tabled.

A VIN describes how a vehicle was built. It cannot describe where it was shipped, and no decoder anywhere changes that. The free GCC spec check reads your VIN, gives a verdict with a certainty score and the evidence behind it, and lists the physical and documentary checks that settle what the VIN cannot, starting with the GSO conformity lookup. The full VIN decoder returns every attribute the decode resolves, and the Nissan page explains the scheme above position by position.

Common questions

Does a Qashqai VIN show the model year?

Not on the export layout. Position 10, which is the model year on an American car, is a destination code on an export Nissan: U for Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, A for Australia and general export, and Z for the rest of the world. A 2003 and a 2012 car can carry the same letter. The model year lives on the chassis plate and in Nissan's own build records, not in the VIN.

Other Nissan models

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4 code rows
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4 code rows
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4 code rows
Nissan Urvan
3 code rows
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3 code rows
Nissan Sunny
7 code rows
Nissan Micra
3 code rows
Nissan Maxima
4 code rows
Nissan Tiida
2 code rows
Nissan Murano
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Nissan Juke
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All Nissan VINs
The full brand scheme