---
title: "Registered Vehicle Check: What Each State Will Actually Tell You"
description: "Registration is a state record, and only three of the fourteen states we read will tell a stranger whether a car's is current. What the rest charge, what you must declare to ask, and why a registration check never shows history."
url: "https://baronauto1.com/vehicle-history/registered-vehicle-check/"
type: "article"
published: "2026-09-06"
modified: "2026-09-06"
site: "Baron Auto"
disclaimer: "This site is under new ownership and is not affiliated with Baron Auto Emporium dealership."
---

# Registered Vehicle Check: What Each State Will Actually Tell You

> Registration is a state record, and only three of the fourteen states we read will tell a stranger whether a car's is current. What the rest charge, what you must declare to ask, and why a registration check never shows history.

*VIN & Vehicle History · 24 min read · 5,448 words*

## The short version

- A registered vehicle check is a state enquiry, not a federal one, and what you can get depends entirely on which state issued the registration.
- Across the fourteen state systems read for this site on 1 September 2026, three publish a tool that will tell a stranger whether a vehicle’s registration is current: Connecticut, Wisconsin and Georgia. The other eleven do not.
- Everywhere else the same question routes through a paper or portal request with a fee attached. Twelve of the fourteen publish a price for a single vehicle record, and it runs from $1.00 in Georgia to $20.00 per record type in Connecticut.
- The federal statute governing all of this protects information about a person, not facts about a machine. That single line explains why an expiration date can be published and a name cannot.
- Claiming a permitted purpose to obtain somebody else’s record is a legal act with consequences attached — Ohio’s own portal warns that false information may amount to a criminal offence.
- Michigan is the only one of the fourteen that publishes how long it keeps what: fifteen years of title record history against four years of registration record history. That ratio is the whole argument about which document is worth checking.
- Whatever you get back is present tense. No registration check in any of these states reports accidents, brands, or the mileage sequence, and two states say so by sending the public to the federal record instead.

The phrase sounds like it should describe one thing. It does not. Ask four people what a registered vehicle check is and you will get a plate status screen, a title enquiry, a lien search and an insurance verification — four different records, held by four different divisions of the same agency, governed by four different rules about who may see them.

What makes this genuinely difficult is that the answer changes at the state line. There is no national registration file. Fifty-odd separate systems each decided independently how much of their own file to publish, and the results are not slight variations on a theme — they are opposite answers to the same question. One state sells a private buyer a research report from its own records. Another states in writing that it does not provide vehicle records to prospective buyers at all. Both are complying with the same federal statute.

This page maps that landscape rather than describing one corner of it. Everything below comes from a set of official state pages and forms read directly on 1 September 2026, covering fourteen states: Connecticut, Maryland, California, New York, Nevada, Arizona, Arkansas, Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Virginia and Georgia. Where a page did not state something, this page says so rather than filling the gap. State tools move, and a fee or a screen described here is a reading of a dated page rather than a permanent fact.

**Figure: What one vehicle record costs, state by state**

A bar per state showing the lowest published price for a single vehicle record in the twelve of the fourteen states read that publish one, running from $1 in Georgia to $20 in Connecticut.

One federal statute, the same question, and a twentyfold spread in what it costs to have it answered. Three of the fourteen states read publish a tool that will tell a stranger whether a vehicle’s registration is current — Connecticut, Wisconsin and Georgia — and everywhere else the question routes into this tier, with a form, an identity document and a declared purpose attached. Two things to know before paying. Michigan’s record sales page states that if no record is found you will still be charged the lookup fees, so what you are buying is a search rather than a result. And the timings do not fit a used-car purchase: New Jersey quotes approximately three to four weeks, Virginia asks you to allow up to fifteen days, and Georgia wants a certified record requested seven days in advance. Read from official state pages on 1 September 2026. New York publishes no fee on its request route and Arkansas prices access by subscription, so neither appears here.

## Four questions wearing one name

Before anything else, work out which of these you actually want, because they are separately held and separately restricted.

**Is the registration current?** A present-tense question about whether a fee was paid and conditions met. This is the narrowest of the four and the one most likely to be published, because the answer does not identify anybody.

**Who owns it?** A title question, not a registration question. The two documents do different jobs, and our guide to [what each one proves](https://baronauto1.com/vehicle-history/title-vs-registration/) works through why a current registration is not evidence of clean ownership.

**Is money owed against it?** A lien question, recorded against the title. Several states publish this one even while closing the ownership question, because a business lienholder is a company rather than a person.

**What has happened to it?** A history question, and no state registration file answers it. This is the one people most often want and the one a registration check structurally cannot deliver.

The reason these separate so cleanly is the federal statute underneath. The Driver’s Privacy Protection Act, at 18 U.S.C. § 2721, restricts disclosure of personal information from state motor vehicle records. What it shields is information identifying an individual. It has nothing to say about a vehicle’s expiration date, its emissions status, or the name of the bank holding its title — which is exactly why those things turn up on public screens while a registrant’s name does not. Our guide to [why there is no free plate-to-VIN lookup](https://baronauto1.com/vehicle-history/license-plate-to-vin/) sets the statute out properly; here it matters mainly as the line that decides which fields a state may publish.

## Three tiers, and yours is decided before you start

Every registration enquiry in the fourteen states falls into one of three tiers, and which tier you land in is settled by the state and by whose vehicle it is, not by how much you are willing to pay.

**Tier one: the open screen.** A web page that takes a plate or a vehicle identification number, requires no account, and returns a status. It exists in three of the fourteen states for registration specifically, and in a slightly wider set for title and lien enquiries. Nothing personal comes back, and the pages generally say so on their face.

**Tier two: the owner’s own portal.** An account keyed to your licence or identification number, showing your own vehicles. Useful, and useless to a buyer. Minnesota’s driving-record service puts it plainly: you cannot get a copy of someone else’s record online, only your own. New York adds a warning worth remembering — its portal registration page is not an official registration record, and official documentation means ordering an abstract.

**Tier three: the records request.** A form, a fee, an identity document, and a declared purpose. All fourteen states operate one. This is where every closed state routes you, and it is the tier most people arrive at without realising they have crossed a legal boundary on the way.

The tiers are not a ladder you can climb by paying more. Tier three does not open personal information to a curious buyer; it opens it to a requester with a purpose the statute recognises, and curiosity is not one of them.

## The three states that answer over the counter

Connecticut, Wisconsin and Georgia each publish a tool that a stranger can point at a vehicle they do not own and get a registration answer from. They are worth describing individually because they draw the line in three different places.

**Georgia answers the most.** Its status lookup takes either a tag number or a vehicle identification number, plus the Georgia county where the vehicle is registered — a required dropdown covering all 159 of them. What comes back is a set of statuses: registration, insurance, penalty, emissions and suspension, alongside a few details about the vehicle. The page is explicit that this is all it returns, and no login is required. Insurance status on a public screen is rare enough to be worth a second look, and our guide to [what Georgia actually shows](https://baronauto1.com/vehicle-history/georgia-tag-lookup/) works through the whole screen.

**Wisconsin answers precisely.** Its plate search takes a plate number and nothing else, and returns the registration expiration date, the vehicle year, the vehicle make and the renewal reference number used for online renewals. The page states that personal information such as name and address will not be displayed. Year and make are the useful part for a buyer: they let you test whether the plate on the car belongs to the car it is bolted to.

**Connecticut answers, but does not say what with.** Its verify-registration tool takes a plate number and a plate class from a dropdown, entered exactly as they appear on the registration, and the page describes what it does in one line — it searches the department’s database for compliance issues. No account, no fee shown, no eligibility restriction stated on the page. What the result screen contains was not verifiable from the published page, so this site does not claim it shows an expiration date or anything else. Connecticut also runs a second tool that sweeps every vehicle a person owns, has registered or leases for property tax, insurance and emissions problems — but that one is keyed to your own name, date of birth and Connecticut licence number, which puts it firmly in tier two.

A wider set of states publishes a title or lien screen rather than a registration screen. New York’s takes a vehicle identification number with the model year and make, and returns the date the title was issued, the number of liens and the lienholder’s name and address, while stating that it displays no personal information about the owner or registrant. Ohio’s title search takes a number and returns title rows with issue dates, statuses and brand fields, plus mileage and mileage brand. Wisconsin runs a lien search on a bare identification number that will tell you whether the title went to the owner or to a lender, and name a business lender. Georgia runs a title status lookup that its own page calls strictly for public use, providing limited information.

## What the other eleven offer instead

The remaining states in the set publish no registration status check that a stranger can use, and several say so in terms.

Virginia is the bluntest: its own page on non-governmental access opens by stating that all DMV records are privileged and are not available to the general public. Nevada’s records page says the department does not provide vehicle records to prospective buyers, and adds that information on abandoned or crash-involved vehicles is not released to the public. Maryland, Minnesota and Michigan publish no tool at all that will answer a question about a registered vehicle from its plate. Michigan goes further and notes that vehicle title and registration searches are not provided at its offices either, so an in-person visit buys you nothing a form would not.

California is the most instructive of the closed states, because it has exactly one no-login tool that accepts a plate and it is a fee calculator. Feed it a plate or control-file number, the last five digits of the identification number, and a county, city and postcode, and it will tell you what a renewal costs. It will not tell you who owns the car, whether the registration is current, or anything about the title. A state can publish a plate-keyed tool and still publish nothing about the vehicle.

Arizona sits awkwardly in the middle. It runs a title status check on a vehicle identification number, pitched by the transport department as pre-purchase research, which reveals current financial or operation-of-law liens and states that no personal information will be accessible through it. Whether it requires an account was not resolvable from the published pages — the portal banner says all its services need a sign-in, while the department’s own description of the tool mentions no account at all. That contradiction is unresolved here rather than guessed at.

Arkansas is the outlier. Its title, registration and lien search exists and is genuinely open to individuals and businesses — behind a subscription costing $150 annually for the first ten users, rising by $150 for each further set of ten. No per-search fee was published. For one buyer checking one car, that is not a route.

## What the paper route costs, and what you are buying

Every state in the set runs a records request, and twelve of the fourteen publish a price for a single vehicle record. Laid end to end, the spread is the most striking number on this page.

Georgia sells a tag, title and lien information printout for $1.00 on its request form. Arizona charges $2.00 for an uncertified vehicle record dropped off, $3.00 by post or in an office, and $5.00 certified. California charges $5 per automated record. Ohio charges $5.00 per record, with card payments online adding a 1.95% service fee subject to a $1.75 minimum. Wisconsin charges $5 for a non-certified vehicle record and $10 certified, with a further $5 per owner for a history of all owners. Nevada’s fee sheet prices a registration history at $7.00 and a title history at $7.00 plus $3.00 per page of additional research. Virginia charges $9.00 for a vehicle record and a further $5.00 to certify it. Minnesota charges $9 non-certified and $10 certified when you are the subject of the data, and $9.50 and $10.50 when you are not — a small surcharge for being a stranger, and one of the few places any state prices that distinction openly. Maryland charges $12.00 non-certified and $15.00 certified. Michigan and New Jersey both charge $15 per record. Connecticut charges $20.00 per record type, and its title search costs $20 with certification a further $20.

New York states no fee on its request route, which is not the same as free, and Arkansas prices access by subscription rather than by record. Those are the two of the fourteen that do not produce a single comparable figure.

**Michigan’s clause is the one to read before paying anywhere.** Its record sales page states that if no record is found, you will be charged the lookup fees associated with your request. That is the correct model — you are buying a search, not a result — and it is worth assuming everywhere rather than only where it is printed. A registration enquiry that comes back empty has still cost you the fee, and an empty result on a car you were about to buy is information, not a refund.

Time is the other cost. New Jersey’s registration record request takes approximately three to four weeks. Virginia’s purchaser inquiry by post asks you to allow up to fifteen days. Georgia requires certification of a tag, title and lien record to be requested seven days in advance. None of these fits inside the window in which a used car is actually bought and sold, which is the practical reason the paper tier rarely helps a private buyer even where it is open to them.

## The permitted purpose, and what you are signing

The moment your enquiry concerns somebody else’s vehicle, the forms stop asking what you want and start asking why.

The federal statute works by enumerating purposes rather than people. Minnesota’s access agreement for private businesses refers to fourteen statutory categories under 18 U.S.C. § 2721, and its public request form carries thirteen permissible-use checkboxes in a section of its own — government functions, safety, theft and recall work, litigation, insurance, licensed private investigators, employers of commercial drivers, toll operators, impound notification. Michigan lists its purposes A through M and states that if you do not have permission to access personal information in a record, that information will be redacted or concealed, or the request denied outright. Connecticut’s mail-in form carries ten purpose codes, and requires a private investigator’s licence to be shown and recorded along with a second form of identification. Maryland refers to authorised entities without enumerating the uses. No permissible-use checklist appeared on any Arkansas page read for this work.

One statute, then, and four different ways of asking about it. What does not vary is the weight of the answer.

**Ohio prints the consequence on the form.** Its certified record portal asks the requester to certify that they will not disclose the information except as authorised by state law, and to keep for five years a record identifying every person or entity that receives any of the personal information. It then warns that supplying false information may constitute a criminal offence of falsification, carrying a maximum penalty of six months in jail and a $1000 fine. Ticking a purpose box you do not have is not a formality with a bad outcome at the far end of it. It is the offence.

New Jersey makes the same point from the other direction. Its business access system carries an explicit prohibition: it cannot be used to surveil, investigate or locate individuals for non-motor-vehicle activities such as immigration enforcement, domestic disputes or matchmaking services. Its searches cannot use a name or address as criteria at all. Minnesota logs every access by username, date, time, IP address and the data searched, requires supporting documentation to be retained for at least five years, and conducts its audits at the business’s own expense.

Read those together and the shape of the tier is clear. Institutional access is not a shortcut past the privacy rule; it is the privacy rule with an audit trail bolted to it. The businesses that hold it are the ones that agreed to be inspected, and using it to answer a stranger’s question about a car is precisely what the agreements exclude.

## The four-year fact that settles the argument

One state in the set publishes how long it keeps what, and the figures are more useful than anything else on this page.

Michigan states that its title record histories are held for fifteen years and its registration record histories for four. Same agency, same vehicle, same file room — and the ownership record is kept nearly four times as long as the road-use record.

That is not an accident of storage. It is a statement about what each record is for. A title record has to survive because ownership disputes, brands and liens reach backwards over a vehicle’s whole life. A registration record does not, because its job is to say whether a fee was paid this period. Once the period is over, the record has largely done its work.

For anybody researching a used car, that ratio is the answer to the question they were really asking. A registration check on a ten-year-old vehicle is enquiring against a file that, in the one state that tells us, may not reach back to the middle of the car’s life. A title check on the same vehicle reaches most of the way to its first sale. If you have one enquiry to spend, the retention periods tell you which record to spend it on.

## Two states, one statute, opposite answers

The clearest demonstration that none of this is dictated by federal law is a pair of states that read it in exactly opposite directions.

Virginia says its records are privileged and not available to the general public — and then sells a prospective purchaser inquiry for $12 per vehicle. Give it a make, model and identification number and the department returns a summary from its own file: vehicle description, current information including damage notes, history, the sale date and state, and disclosure statements, with the page stating that it contains no personal information about previous owners. It is a state agency writing a used-car research report for a private buyer, and our guide to [what that inquiry does and does not cover](https://baronauto1.com/vehicle-history/virginia-license-plate-lookup/) works through its edges.

Nevada, holding the same statute, states on its records page that the department does not provide vehicle records to prospective buyers.

Neither state is wrong. The statute restricts personal information and says nothing about whether a state must build a buyer-facing product out of the rest of its file. Virginia decided the non-personal remainder was worth publishing at a price. Nevada decided the whole file stays shut. What that pair proves is that when a state tells you a registration check is impossible, it is describing a policy rather than a legal ceiling — and that the same request may well succeed one state over.

## When “no fee stated” is not the same as free

A small discipline that saves arguments. Several of the open tools in this set do not mention a price anywhere on their pages, and it is tempting to call them free. This site does not, and Wisconsin is the reason why.

None of Wisconsin’s search pages states a fee, and no payment step is described on any of them. But the department’s published fee schedule lists a per-search charge for registration file searches, described as including online searches, without spelling out whether it reaches those particular self-service tools. Two official documents, one silent and one ambiguous, and no way to reconcile them from outside. The only defensible position is the one this site takes on the Wisconsin tools individually: expect no charge, and do not be surprised by one.

New York’s title and lien check has the same shape — no fee is mentioned, which is not a published zero. The honest formulation is that no fee is stated and no payment step is described, and if a charge appears in your flow, that is the resolution.

## What a registration check will never contain

Everything above is about access. This section is about the ceiling, which matters more, because a registration check that works perfectly still cannot answer the question most buyers came with.

No state registration file in this set reports collision damage, salvage or flood brands applied elsewhere, total-loss events, or the odometer sequence filed at each transfer. Those facts are national, keyed to the identification number, and pooled from every state’s title events rather than held in any one state’s registration system.

Two states in the set say so themselves, which is the strongest evidence available. Ohio’s title search page states that results disclose only details about titles issued in Ohio and do not show whether a vehicle was titled in another jurisdiction for any period — and directs the public to approved federal data providers for full vehicle history. Georgia goes further: the menu item labelled vehicle history lookup inside its own portal is not a Georgia search at all, but an outbound link to the federal list of approved providers. Georgia sells no vehicle history report of its own and does not pretend to.

Wisconsin draws the same boundary on its own-record service, which lists vehicle history — prior owners, colour, mileage — among the things explicitly not included. A state describing what its record excludes is doing a buyer a considerable favour.

The practical reading: a registration check is a present-tense instrument. It tells you about the vehicle’s current standing with one state. Everything historical, and everything that happened before the car crossed into that state, sits in a different record entirely.

## The order to run this in if you are buying

Given all of the above, here is the sequence that gets the most out of the least effort.

- **Establish which state issued the registration first.** Not which state the seller lives in — which state’s plate and paperwork the vehicle carries. Everything else on this list branches from that answer, and a vehicle registered in a state you were not expecting is itself worth a question.
- **Try the open screen if that state has one.** In Georgia, Wisconsin or Connecticut, this costs a minute and no money. In the other eleven, skip straight down this list rather than hunting for a tool that was not built.
- **Test the plate against the car where you can.** Wisconsin’s search returns the year and make, which lets you check that the plate belongs on the vehicle wearing it. That is the single most useful thing a stranger may legitimately learn from a plate, and almost nowhere else publishes it.
- **Run the lien or title screen where one exists.** Ohio, Wisconsin and Georgia all take an identification number and nothing else; New York wants the model year and make alongside it. A lender holding the title is the finding most likely to stop a sale on the day.
- **Read the physical documents.** The name on the title against the seller’s identification, the identification number on the title against the windscreen and the door pillar. Free, immediate, and more conclusive than any screen.
- **Then go national for the history.** Brands, total-loss records and the mileage sequence are pooled federally and are the half no state tool reaches — which is exactly what Ohio and Georgia are telling you when they point outward.

Note what is not on that list: a paid state records request. For a private buyer inside a normal purchase window, tier three is too slow and too restricted to help, with the single exception of Virginia’s purchaser inquiry, which was designed for exactly this use and priced accordingly.

## When the check disagrees with the car

Occasionally an open screen returns something that does not match the vehicle in front of you, and the reaction that follows is usually stronger than the situation deserves.

Work through the dull explanations first. A plate transferred to a newer vehicle leaves a stale pairing behind. Several states in this set treat the plate as belonging to the person rather than the car, so the characters you typed may now be attached to something else entirely. A transcription error is the commonest cause of all — Wisconsin’s pages specifically instruct users to type the digit zero rather than the letter O and to omit spaces and hyphens, and that instruction exists because it accounts for a great many reports of a broken lookup.

A returned year and make that do not match the car is a different matter, and it is a stop rather than a puzzle. The benign version is a plate swapped between two vehicles in one household. The other versions are worse, and none of them is a reason to continue without an answer.

What is genuinely serious is a mismatch on the vehicle itself: a windscreen number that disagrees with the door-pillar label, or either disagreeing with the title. A database contradicting the road is a data problem. A car contradicting itself is not.

## Checking your own registration, where the answer is yes

Almost everything restrictive on this page is about disclosure to other people. Your own record is a different matter, and the tier-two portals exist precisely for it.

Nevada’s portal lets an account holder check current registration and insurance status. Wisconsin will email you your own vehicle record — vehicle, title, plate and registration details, plus emissions test information where applicable — for $5 online, or $10 for a certified copy by post. California lets an owner buy and print their own vehicle record online for $2, with a warning worth heeding: you get one opportunity to print it after the fee is paid. Connecticut’s compliance check sweeps every vehicle you own, have registered or lease for property tax, insurance and emissions problems in a single pass.

Two reasons to bother. The first is that a registration problem you do not know about — a lapse, an emissions stop, an unpaid property tax in the states that attach one — surfaces at the worst possible moment, and the penalties in some systems are separate and lift separately. The second is that if you are selling, a careful buyer in an open state can run the plate screen while standing next to your car. Anything they will see, you want to have seen first.

Nevada adds a third reason that is really a duty. Its resale notification asks a seller to report a sale within five days, and notes that the department passes that information to wreckers, tow operators and other interested parties on request. Filing whatever notice your state provides on the day the vehicle leaves is the cheapest protection in a private sale, and the reason a sold car keeps generating notices in a former owner’s name is almost always that nobody filed it.

## Common questions

### Is there a national registered vehicle check?

No. Registration is administered state by state with no pooled national file and no public search across states. The record that is consolidated nationally is title and brand data, which is why every history product is built on the identification number rather than on a plate or a registration.

### Can I check whether a car’s registration is current before I buy it?

In three of the fourteen states read for this page, yes, from a public web page with no account. In the other eleven, not as a member of the public — the enquiry routes through a records request with a fee and a declared purpose, and several of those states state plainly that they do not provide vehicle records to prospective buyers.

### Why can I see a lienholder’s name but not an owner’s?

Because the federal statute protects personal information identifying an individual, and a bank is not one. That is why Wisconsin’s lien search will name a business lender and explicitly will not name an individual private lender, and why New York can publish a lienholder’s name and address while stating that it displays no personal information about the owner or registrant.

### How much does a state vehicle record cost?

Among the twelve states in this set that publish a price, from $1.00 for Georgia’s information printout to $20.00 per record type in Connecticut, with most states between $5 and $15. Certification is usually extra, several states charge a surcharge when you are not the subject of the record, and at least one state charges the search fee whether or not a record is found.

### Does a registration check show accidents or a salvage brand?

No. Nothing in a state registration file reports collision damage, brands applied by other states, total-loss events or the odometer sequence. Two of the fourteen states say so on their own pages and send the public to the federal record instead, which is the clearest possible confirmation that this is a ceiling rather than an oversight.

### What is a permissible purpose, and do I have one?

It is one of a defined set of reasons the federal statute recognises for releasing personal information from a motor vehicle record — government functions, safety and theft work, litigation, insurance claims, employers of commercial drivers, and others. Wanting to research a car you might buy is not among them. Declaring one you do not hold is a false statement on a government form, and at least one state prints the criminal penalty for it on the request itself.

### Can a service look up a registration for me?

Anything offering to return a registrant’s name and address to a private customer is offering what the statute closes, and that is a reason to walk away rather than a bargain. Services that return vehicle facts rather than personal ones can be legitimate, but they are drawing on licensed data rather than a public register, and coverage varies by state.

### The lookup returned nothing for a plate I know is valid. What happened?

Most often a transcription problem — a letter O typed where a zero belongs, or a space or hyphen included where the tool expects none. Re-enter it character by character before concluding the record is absent. A no-result is far more often a typing failure than a missing vehicle.

### I moved states. Does my old registration record follow me?

No. The new state registers the vehicle under its own rules and the old registration lapses, leaving its record behind in a system the new state does not query for registration purposes. Title and brand data is meant to travel; registration data is not, which is a large part of why a registration check tells you so little about where a car has been.

### If I can only do one check, which should it be?

The title side, not the registration side. Michigan’s published retention periods make the case better than any argument: fifteen years of title history against four of registration history, in the same agency. The record kept longest is the record built to answer questions about the past, and the past is what a used-car buyer is trying to see.

## Sources and further reading

- [18 U.S.C. § 2721, Driver’s Privacy Protection Act](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2721)
- [NMVTIS (US Department of Justice)](https://vehiclehistory.bja.ojp.gov/)
- [NMVTIS approved data providers](https://vehiclehistory.bja.ojp.gov/nmvtis_vehiclehistory)
- [NY DMV register and title a vehicle](https://dmv.ny.gov/registration/register-and-title-vehicle)

Recall, complaint and safety-rating figures on this page were retrieved from the federal databases above on August 19, 2026. Federal data changes — re-check any VIN before you rely on it.

---

*This site is under new ownership and is not affiliated with Baron Auto Emporium dealership.*

Canonical source: https://baronauto1.com/vehicle-history/registered-vehicle-check/