What is the make and model of a car?

Short answer: the make is the company that built the car, and the model is the name of that specific car. In "Toyota Corolla", Toyota is the make and Corolla is the model. In "Ford F-150", Ford is the make and F-150 is the model.

If you're filling in a form right now, that's probably all you need. Write the brand in the "make" box and the car's name in the "model" box, and you're done.

If you want to be sure, or your car is one of the confusing ones, the rest of this page goes through it with real examples from VehiclesDB, a catalog of 16,443 vehicle models across 972 makes built from official vehicle data in 18 countries (national registration registers, one Swiss canton's register and the US and Canadian fuel economy listings).

Make vs model: the difference

Think of it like a person's family name and first name:

• Make is the family: the manufacturer or brand. Toyota, Volkswagen, Honda, BMW, Ford, Tesla. You'll usually find it as the badge on the front of the car.
• Model is the individual: the product name the manufacturer gave that particular car. Corolla, Golf, Civic, 3 Series, Mustang, Model 3. It's usually written on the back.

One make has many models. Toyota alone has hundreds in our catalog, from the Corolla and the Camry to vans, trucks and buses most people have never heard of. A model, on the other hand, belongs to exactly one make: there's no Corolla made by Honda.

So when a form asks "make and model", it wants both halves: who made it, and which one it is.

Examples of car make and model

Here are some common cars split into their make and model:

What people call it	Make	Model
Toyota Corolla	Toyota	Corolla
Honda Civic	Honda	Civic
Ford F-150	Ford	F-150
Chevy Silverado	Chevrolet	Silverado
VW Golf	Volkswagen	Golf
BMW 3 Series	BMW	3 Series
Tesla Model 3	Tesla	Model 3
Mercedes-Benz Sprinter	Mercedes-Benz	Sprinter

Two things worth noticing in that table:

• Nicknames aren't makes. "Chevy" is Chevrolet and "VW" is Volkswagen. On a form, write the full name if you can; most insurance and DMV systems expect it.
• Some model names contain the word "model". Tesla Model 3 has a model called "Model 3". That's not a mistake; it's just what Tesla named it.

Is Toyota a make or a model?

Toyota is a make. So are Honda, Ford, Kia, Nissan, Chevrolet, Hyundai and BMW. If you can put "a ___" in front of the name and say "they also make other cars", it's a make: "Toyota makes the Corolla, the Camry and the RAV4".

A quick way to check any name: look it up in our list of makes. If it's there, it's a make; if you find it inside a make's page, it's a model.

The tricky cases

Most cars are easy. These are the ones that confuse people, and forms:

The same car sold under two makes. The Opel Corsa and the Vauxhall Corsa are the same car: Vauxhall is the name Opel cars are sold under in the UK. In official registration data they appear as two different makes, and both are correct. Write the make that's on your car's badge and your registration document.

A model that became a make. For years the Ram pickup was the "Dodge Ram". Then Ram became a brand of its own, so newer trucks are simply "Ram 1500". Registers have both: we see the Dodge Ram 1500 in the registers of Australia, Spain, Finland, the UK, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and the Swiss canton of Thurgau, and the Ram 1500 as its own make. If your truck says Ram on the tailgate and on the papers, the make is Ram.

One make, many kinds of vehicle. Honda builds cars, but it also builds motorcycles, mopeds and vans. In our catalog most Honda models are motorcycles. When a form also asks for the vehicle type, that's why.

The same model under different spellings. Registers in different countries write the same car differently. In our data the BMW 3 Series has also been recorded as "Serie 3" (Spanish and Italian) and "3er Reihe" (German). It's still the same model, and the right answer on an English form is "3 Series".

Badges that are actually versions. "Golf GTI", "Corolla XSE", "Camry SE" or "320d" usually aren't separate models; they're versions of the Golf, the Corolla, the Camry and the 3 Series. Unless the form has a separate field for it, put the main model name in "model" and leave the rest out, or put it in a "trim" field if there is one.

What about trim, year and body type?

Forms often ask for more than make and model. Here's what each field means:

• Year (model year): the year the manufacturer assigned to that version of the car. It's often not the year you bought it; a car sold in late 2025 may well be a 2026 model year.
• Trim (or version): the equipment level within a model: LE, SE, XLE, GTI, Sport. Same model, different engine, wheels or features.
• Body type: the shape: sedan, hatchback, SUV, wagon, pickup, van. The Golf is a hatchback, but there's also a Golf wagon.

So a complete description of a car looks like this: 2026 Toyota Corolla LE sedan. That's year, make, model, trim and body type, in that order.

Where to find your car's make and model

If you're not sure what's written on the car, there are four places to look, roughly from most to least reliable:

1. Your registration document (the vehicle registration certificate, V5C logbook in the UK, title in the US). It has a make field and a model field, filled in by the authorities. That's exactly what an insurance or DMV form expects.
2. Your insurance card or policy, which copies the same details.
3. The badges on the car. The make is usually the logo on the front; the model is usually written on the back, often with the trim next to it.
4. The VIN (vehicle identification number), the 17-character code usually visible at the base of the windscreen and on the driver's door frame. Its first three characters identify the manufacturer. A VIN decoder like the free NHTSA decoder turns a US-market VIN into make, model and model year.

Looking for the year your car was made? The model year is on the registration document and is encoded in the 10th character of the VIN. The exact manufacture date (month and year) is usually printed on a label on the driver's door frame.

Make and model on insurance and DMV forms

A few practical tips for the form in front of you:

• Copy your registration document. Insurers and DMVs check against it, so matching it exactly avoids back-and-forth.
• If the form has a dropdown, pick the make first; the model list then narrows to that make's models. If your model isn't listed, look for the main model name without the trim ("Corolla", not "Corolla Hybrid XSE").
• Don't put the make in the model box ("Toyota Corolla" in the model field). Most systems store them separately.
• Motorcycles work the same way: Yamaha is the make, MT-07 is the model.

Look up any make

Want to see every model a make has ever had on the road? Every make in our catalog has its own page with all its models, built from official registration data:

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Or browse: all makes, A to Z · cars · motorcycles · vans · trucks.

Building a form that asks this question? You don't need to maintain a list of makes and models by hand. The make and model dropdown gives you a dependent make → model picker with one script tag, kept current from the same registration data, and it's free. If you'd rather have the raw data, the whole list is a free download.