Build date proof › Europe
Certificate of Conformity (CoC)
Proves nothing about age, and is actively misleading: a CoC issued today for a 1997 car is dated today.
- covers
- Any European vehicle
- issuer
- The manufacturer
- cost
- Typically EUR 100-250 from the manufacturer
- time
- Weeks
No date of manufacture
Carries no date of manufacture. Useful for other things; useless for proving a car's age.
What you have to supply
The VIN.
Limits and gaps
The CoC carries the VIN, type approval, dimensions, masses, engine, emissions, tyres, brakes and colour. The only date on it is its own date of issue.
Notes
US shipping guidance sometimes lists a certificate of conformity including the production date as acceptable. Read that clause carefully - the words doing the work are 'including the production date'. A bare CoC has no production date on it.
Checked against the issuer's own page issuer page · retrieved 25 September 2026
The Build Date Proof Pack
This page tells you which document to order. The pack gets it ordered — and tells you what to do when the answer is that no document exists.
- A ready-to-send request for every archive, in the language it wants
- Exactly which numbers to photograph, and where they are on the car
- What to ask the seller for before you pay the deposit
- The fallback ladder when the manufacturer has no records
- What US, Canadian and Australian officials each accept as proof