I've been there - the dock in Southampton is pretty safe... If you don't belong on the docks, you can't get on the docks... Plus it's not just MINIs that wait in the W&W car parks... There's brand spanking new Land Rovers and Jaguars there waiting to leave the country among other freight...

 

Not necessarily safer from theft, but safer in the terms that if anything happens to the cars on factory property they probably can get them fixed a lot easier before they leave. I doubt they would leave that for the VDC to handle, but who knows.

 

And what a football game it was! Tomorrow is the parade in Baltimore; not much working getting done anywhere before Wednesday!

 

I know it is!!!! GRRRRRR. It was a great game, but get to work!!!! I want my Mini. Can I pout some more? Pout pout pout, do I need to throw a foot stomp in for a good temper tantrum?

 

Nice! Is there any defined meaning to the other VIN digits?

This untrackable no-mans land between the MINI factory and a cargo ship is brutal. I've also been trying to do something to take my mind off the waiting: I wrote a little Python script to check the WW cargo website for my VIN every 3 minutes and email me when something turns up...

-Brett

 

Try calling Ask-Mini and ask for BMW Finance department. They will transfer you and tell them when you ordered your car as they can look up all the records and note your account for the deal.

 

OK Chris and Seabeast...I am REALLY impressed. So I can list tons of cars with Cargo IDs but how do I see my car sitting at the port? And Seabeast, every 3 mins !!! D@mn!
I'm a computer guy by trade but not at writing python scripts or anything else beyond basic VBS and Batches. I'd love to have a script like that just to check once an hour or even ever few hours. WMWSU9C50DT722126 This is all I have until my baby is home.

I even searched the Internet (I know this may sound easy bit better than most with all the crazy word groupings I use as I have a decent background in SEO (trained two people that now do it full time as their day jobs, funny I train them and they got the jobs ) for Web Cams and Security Cameras accessible by the public to see the cars sitting at port but no luck.

WARNING: I put my VIN in but don't click on it as NAM tries to decode it and the webpage just hangs. At least it does that to me.

 

Well, I may have boasted too soon. After posting that message, my script started getting a server error from the WW cargo tracker, so it may have just been getting lucky earlier when it seemed to work. Or maybe the frequent queries triggered something on the server and I'm blocked now. I'll have to see if it works again tomorrow, and maybe dial it down to once every hour or so. The 3 min thing was mostly for debug purposes.

 

Na it crashed on me too

 

On the VIN topic - here's what I've been able to ascertain:

WMWSV3C56DT477567 - typical VIN. Happens to be mine.

First three characters identify the manufacturer:

W - Built in Germany
M - it's a Mini
W - Company specific identifier

Next numbers give model specifics:

S - from what I can tell, second gen Mini (first gens had an R here, S is logically after R)
V - Model? What I read online said that this specified the model for first-gen minis. I'm a Cooper S. My wife's Justa has a U, however, and so is Weaf's JCW. So it must be something else. On the WW site, I've found S, U, R, W, X, Y, and V
3 - Not sure. The first-gen info said that 1 was for diesel and 3 for gas, but Weaf has a 9, my wife's Justa and my MCS have a 3. Perhaps it's because he has a JCW? I've seen 1, 3, 5, 7, 9. Of all the cars loaded on the Gentle Leader, none had a 5 - but there were 5's on cars headed elsewhere.
C - Unknown. Sources seem to think this specifies US destined car. Every car loaded on the Gentle Leader had a C here.
5 - Safety restraint info (cars pre-2005 had a 4)
6 - Checksum digit
D - Model Year (2010 = A, '11 = B, '12 = C, '13 = D; 2001-2009 cars used 1-9)
T - Plant of Origin

Last six are the serial number:

477567 - vehicle serial number - I know that something in here is unique to each model, because you can give RealOEM the last 7 of your VIN and it will get your specific model based on that. For my car, RealOEM only recognized up to VIN T477023 - which must be the final car in the MCS 11/2012 production month.

For reference - my Wife's '12 Justa - Auto, sunroof, base. WMWSU3C5XCT539991

I'm surprised there's not more info out there about this...!

 

Chris, I thought I'd have some spare time in my life after selling one of my businesses but you obviously have a lot more. Thank you for finding out all this great information as I am one of those that loves to know the method to the madness and find the VIN info very interesting. I wonder if the first letter is more for where the highest percentage of parts come from if the Countryman are built in Germany as our Minis are currently built in England unless W is England? I haven't seen a Countryman VIN yet.

I wonder if there is an application out there (on the net) that deciphers VINs? I used to have an app that I could put some basic info in about you and it would tell me your FL Drivers Lic #,.

 

DOH!

 

The good think is the WMWS% string worked! 5000 vehicles came up so I sorted them for Brunswick where my car is supposed to come into. The bad thing only 5 vehicles are going to Brunswick. Mine has been in "transport" for over a week and it doesn't show it as even logged in. My hopes have been dashed and I'm back to being in "no info limbo". Who would have ever thought that ordering a car would consume so much of our lives? Egad, did I just call my Mini a...."car"..?

 

weaf, you thought I was OC... I think seabeast and Chris are way ahead of me in that catagory .

hippo, The worst part is when you are stuck in limbo like you are. At least when it was under production you knew where your MINI was, when its on the boat you know, but now you are in the void with no info that Sucks.

I am watching a little red dot slowly inch across the Atlantic...ugh

 

"A Car:" Too funny! I think its funny, like an unwritten rule to never to refer to your Mini as "A Car" its almost like cursing at it as if it was a derogatory term when referring to a Mini. After posting over 100 messages on this forum I keep finding myself every once in a while typing "Car" only to go back most of the time and change it to "My Mini" or like reference. I guess you become addicted well before you even realize you've been infected by the addiction.

As for Limbo don't worry a handful of us have our Minis keeping yours company before the long voyage home. Limbo sucks but it is always good to have friends.

 

Was just messing with you as I am a firm believer that everyone is OC in some fashion and to some degree. I also believe that in this world, People are the most Entertaining thing and if you are not being entertained you probably are the entertainment. So basically you were entertaining me as I know I have been equally entertaining to most.

Remember it could always be worse as my oldest Son has OCD with germs so like the famous person Tesla he washes his hands so often that they actually bleed from time to time. He was really mean to his little brother about a year back so I had little brother go rub his arm until he asked what he was doing and little brother told him he was exfoliating on him. Revenge was sweet and now big brother treats him much nicer in fear of a repeat of the event or worse.

 

O.K. who is hacking MiniUSA.com to find their car? The site just crashed and crashed hard enough they are redirecting to another site showing they are down.

 

How do I find out my VIN number?

 

In the Owners Lounge - Track your Baby - Review Order Status. It'll show your VIN, Production Number, and some info about the options selected.

 

My fault!

I succumbed to the pressure and e-mailed my MA requesting a status. I know it's at the dock in Bremerhaven but it's not showing up on W&W's tracker. Not sure if I'm looking at an NYK or KLine shipment instead...

 

I blame seabeast , his script bringing the whole mini traking system down

 

LMAO, that was funny!!

 

Very true about me having too much time! I do IT for a living, so I'm generally in front of a computer all day anyways, it's nice to have something else open in the background to distract me.

Here's a site with a bunch of webcams at Bremerhaven, including one that's a live 360/PTZ camera that you can controll and has a really impressive zoom. http://www.bremerhaven.de/webcams-from-bremerhaven/ (Straight to the cool camera: http://www.wsa-bremerhaven.de/servic...ad-Kamera.html)

Here's one at the Automobile Export area of Bremerhaven. Not sure if all cars go through here or not, but you can open up this page in tandem with http://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/ and be able to ID what ship is parked there pretty easily.

Before we go to Southampton - here's a video I found of a car tour inside of one of the WW ships: . As the top comment says..."The reason why our car's mileage isn't close to zero when we collet (sic) her!"

Southampton doesn't have much in the form of webcams, unfortunately - but I did find this page of planned ship movements: http://www.southamptonvts.co.uk/Live...ned_Movements/ - on it, it says that my expected ship (the Tombarra) is scheduled to leave on the 10th at 2100UTC. It's also the only ship leaving Southampton for the Panama Canal on the current schedule, so that is the next ship to the US west coast. It isn't scheduled to show up until 0730UTC on the 10th - so they are going to fully load and leave in one day. Here's a list of all live info that the port of Southampton makes available: http://www.southamptonvts.co.uk/Live...Ship_Schedule/. Unfortunately, it's all text-based, but it's still a good amount.

This is a webcam that jumps around a lot, but is situated on the water that connects Southampton to the Atlantic - so all ship traffic will have to pass by here. You might catch a glimpse of at least the ship as it goes by...http://www.intheelements.co.uk/blog/...t-and-calshot/

Okay...that's probably enough for now!

 

Ha, in addition to our MINIs having almost identical builds, we also have sequential VIN numbers! Mine is WMWSV3C58DT477568, differing only in the last and check digits.

I'm a little bummed yours was first.

I'm guessing they cluster cars by paint color, so this probably is less of a coincidence than it seems.

 

I knew that was coming.

But, it's not my fault! All you people frantically refreshing your browser windows creates far more load than my poor little script ever did!