Cant pull vin# on toyota site

If the car is originally from Hawaii, it won't show up on Toyota's website

 

You can always do a prepurchase inspection with Toyota. Only will cost you 1 or 2 hours of labor.

 

If you’re concerned about a counterfeit VIN, I’ve written about some basic checks for casual tampering you can do on the vehicle itself. If you take the vehicle to a dealer or mechanic who has a Toyota Techstream diagnostic system or equivalent, it should also be able to read the VIN stored in the car’s computers.

Does the window sticker say which Toyota dealer sold the car originally?

To expand on this a bit, Toyota Motor Corporation, the parent company in Japan, has several dealers and distributors in the U.S. and its territories who do not buy their new vehicles from Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A., Inc. (TMS), the distributor for the contiguous U.S. and Alaska. These companies include:

• Servco Pacific, Inc. (Hawaii)
• Toyota de Puerto Rico, Corp.
• Atkins Kroll (Guam) Ltd.
• Atkins Kroll (Saipan), Inc.
• Toyota Tsusho (American Samoa) Inc. (dba Asco Motors)

Toyota vehicles sold by these companies are built to comply with U.S. regulations, but since TMS didn’t sell them, information about them isn’t available on the Vehicle Specification | Toyota Owners site operated by TMS.

There’s nothing inherently suspicious about such a vehicle for sale as a used car. Remember that Hawaii and several of the territories have large military installations, whose personnel buy cars and trucks and sometimes ship them back to the mainland when their assignments end.

A 2012 Prius with 41,000 miles should still have some warranty coverage remaining for certain hybrid system and emissions-related components. It might be worth a call to TMS (1-800-331-4331) to confirm that their mainland U.S. dealers would honor this warranty for the Prius you’re thinking of buying; I think they should, but my reading of the Toyota Warranty Policy and Procedures Manual is worth exactly what you’ve paid for it.