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VIN: Different formats in Europe and USA?

Hi,

I'd tryed to descript VIN of my '80 518 with help of information
wich I found on FTP. The info says:

                                         WBA AA13 1 - L A E57862
Mfg. Code                                  ^  ^   ^ ^ ^ ^   ^
 WBA -- BMW-AG, Munich                     |  |   | | | |   |
 WBS -- BMW Motorsport Gmbh, Munich  ------+  |   | | | |   |
                                              |   | | | |   |
[etc. deleted]

but VIN on my car has no any letters in position of "A" in example above,
no "-" or letters between the numbers but only numbers. And I didn't
found any simple way to substitute those letters by numbers (e.g. "A"="1",
"B"="2" etc.) because in case of my VIN it has no any sense.
The only similarity with shown example is total length of the VIN...

Does it means that VIN are different for USA-exported cars and European?
Can somebody provide more information about decoding of VIN?

Hilsen,

Algirdas