Searching for an electronic database for every automobile ever!

February 21, 2008 8:32 AM

Does anyone know of any online (or otherwise electronic) databases for every make/model of automobile every produced worldwide? This can be broken up into several separate databases, so if you know of a resource for German, Japanese, American (etc.) cars, that would help too!...

I need this information to migrate over into a website I'm developing. I could probably scour for hours on end Kelly Blue Book or other similar sites, or even turn to the library and create my own database, but I'd much rather purchase or freely obtain these databases.

The rub is, I'd ideally like to be able to integrate the info into a website. The site isn't expressly to simply have this database of automobiles, but the user would need the ability to search said database for the car they own now, or owned in 1930 (which explains why I'd like it to span the history of the automobile industry).

Would I need to turn to each manufacturer (in which case, many are overseas or have been out of business for a number of years, which would make things complicated), or would dealers have this kind of info, or is it public domain kind of info and I'd be able to procure it electronically and easily (and freely!) somewhere else.

Thanks so much!

posted by Detuned Radio to computers & internet (6 comments total)

What type of information are you looking for? Sales information? Repair manuals?

As far as repair manuals, I'm not aware of any online sources for mid-90s Volvo's (the car that I have), but I know that the official Volvo repair information isn't sold to regular people. There's sometimes pirated copies on eBay, but that's about it.

This sounds like a huge project.
posted by pete0r at 8:45 AM on February 21

Ahhh, let me address that blaring ommission!

All I need are general specs on these automobiles. Beyond just make/model/year, I'd need engine type, body type, transmission type - basically all the brochure specs that you'd get on the window sticker if it were sitting in a lot.
posted by Detuned Radio at 9:30 AM on February 21

All you need, huh? That's a HUGE amount of data.

There is an entire industry around automotive data. You're not going to find this for free. You'll likely need to subscribe to a data service like Mitchell . If this is a for profit enterprise you're planning - you'll need a licensing agreement with them to reuse the data. Good luck.
posted by Wolfie at 9:54 AM on February 21

Having just worked on a project requiring just the year, make, model, and trims for North American cars, I can tell you that this is not a small undertaking. There are companies that provide the data, and regularly keep it up to date. It is not cheap. I think there were approximately 1400 combinations of make, model, and trim (which you need to get the specs you are interested in) per model year from 1992-2008. Autodata
posted by bastionofsanity at 10:52 AM on February 21

A couple of partial ideas of varying sanity/legality.

1) Wikipedia has much of the data in reasonably regular layout, it might be scrapable.
2) Cars.com has a set of dropdowns with (at least) make and model types, scraping would be trivial but dubiously legal.
posted by Skorgu at 11:29 AM on February 21

There are a ton of different car part websites out there, and they all have fairly complete lookups. They probably get their info from somewhere.
posted by gjc at 5:24 PM on February 21