What is required to make an inquiry into the NICB databases?

To make an inquiry into the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB) databases, having a partial Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) prefaced accordingly is sufficient. The NICB databases are designed to help investigators and authorized users track vehicles that may be stolen or involved in insurance fraud. A partial VIN can provide enough information to pull relevant records when it is formatted correctly, ensuring that the query can match the vehicles in question with their reported statuses.

The reason the other options do not fit is that a full VIN is often more specific than what is necessary for initial inquiries, making it less flexible, while only relying on the vehicle owner's name would not provide the necessary detail to accurately search the NICB records. A report number could be useful in certain contexts but is not required for database inquiries specifically related to vehicle identification. Thus, the correct approach is to use a partial VIN with the proper prefacing, which balances enough information with the ease of query generation.