VIN numbers

[Steven Jones]

I'm writing a scenario that involves Centrum agents travelling to an
alternate where it is 1958. They are buying up '57 Model Chevys and selling
them on Homeline. This scam only comes to the Patrol's attention because a
young recruit had tried to register his genuine Homeline '57 Chev, only for
the RTA (our local version of the DMV) to accuse him of faking the cars VIN
because a '57 with that VIN was already registered (a vehicle from the
alternate that Centrum had imported). I'm trying to figure out why this scam
wasn't picked up earlier (the RTA would have noticed duplicate VINs and the
mint condition of the cars, they just wouldn't have known the real reason
behind it). The rookie's car can't be the only genuine '57 Chevy left on
Homeline.

[Tim Little]

I'm trying to figure out why this scam wasn't picked up earlier (the
RTA would have noticed duplicate VINs and the mint condition of the
cars, they just wouldn't have known the real reason behind it).

How precisely does the alternate timeline track Homeline? I expect
even trivial deviations would be enough to shift the VINs enough that
they aren't precisely identical. They aren't simple sequence numbers
where a given VIN is guaranteed to be hit sooner or later; they
typically encode vehicle properties and a few arbitrary identifiers.

Even the fact of buying up some models more than happened on Homeline
would be enough to shift the sequence numbers compared with models so
that VIN collisions became fairly rare.