anyone know of a service that checks VIN numbers for pre-1981 cars? I wanted to try and find out some of the history of my '76 other than what i already know.

 

Thanks to privacy laws and insurance/law enforcement lobbying, any more you about have to have a friend in law enforcement or insurance to run a VIN history. Some state DMV's will still do it for a fee, but most don't want to be bothered with it because it takes some effort. Even then they can only trace it back until the car was first registered in that state, and a lot of states don't even title cars before 1982 or so.

There are title services, but basically all they do is clean up an existing title or bill of sale so the new owner can register the car.

 

We're all spoiled by the internet. The reality is that for these older cars, the history often just doesn't exist any more. Keep in mind that the information was kept on paper copies in file cabinets, and at some point the states would just purge the system because they didn't want to pay for storage. Services like CarFax can't access data on cars that don't have 17 digit VINs.