F.A.Q. & important info

Car Database was born from a major hobby for automobiles and pleasure for working in Excel and data analysis. This is mostly 1-man business. I (Teoalida) do data entry, web scraping, database updates, design my website, and also customer support via chat every day. I employ other people just for coding certain scrapers too complex for me.

After years of dedication I became the biggest provider of automobile data, making numerous automotive databases for various regions of world, complete, accurate and frequently updated, plus other databases about geography, real estate and electronic products. Check all databases available.

You are allowed to use database commercially in YOUR business or company, on your website, mobile app or other software development.
You are NOT allowed to redistribute / resell database to people outside your company or publish database on other websites.
If you are an individual, student, teacher, and not represent a commercial entity, keep database for YOUR personal use and not give it to anyone else.

Estimating over 10,000 car models and over 1,000 parts in a car, make over 10 million parts, would take several months using my computer only.

If you are a business working globally rather than in a specific country, or working in some other country than the countries covered by my standard car databases, you may be looking for a global car database.

But… this is not really possible. Car specifications vary depending by country of sale for models having same name, and for accuracy reasons, a car database should be specific to cars SOLD in one country, or with some compromise of quality, to one continent.

Several customers attempted to negotiate prices in wrong way, for example offering me only 5% of full database price motivating that need only 5 of 100 columns available. Sorry but prices are not directly proportional with quantity of data.

There is a minimum price of 25-50% that you must pay even if you need just 1 column, for example American car database cheapest option cost 1/3 of full database with 109 columns and include 5 columns of car naming (ID, year, make, model, trim) and if you want them in only 1 column you can use an Excel formula =A1&B1&C1 to combine columns A, B, C.

In 2015 I started using web scraping software to quickly create databases extracting data from various websites. Scraping software do not extract only text (model names and specifications) but also Image URLs (link to image corresponding to each car model, usually in same resolution).

Because of large number of databases that I am selling, and because each customer have different requirements in integrating my database in his website, there is not possible to make ONE plugin and give it to every customer purchasing a database.

Several free plugins for WordPress do exist (example WooCommerce YMM search) but it can be used only for online stores made with WooCommerce and the only car database that works with it is the Year-Make-Model.

As an independent data provider, I do not guarantee interoperability of my databases with other products available online. Actually there is no interoperability between my own car databases, each one being developed independently from different source.

Most common conflicts are at BMW and Mercedes, some show model “BMW 3-Series saloon” with trim/variant “320i”, others shows model “320i” with trim/variant “saloon, touring, coupe, cabrio”, etc, others shows model simply “3-Series” with trim/variant “320i saloon”, and some of those who show 3-Series as model put M3 as separate model instead of a trim/variant under 3-Series.

Dedicating most of my life on data providing industry, I managed to provide the most updated databases ever sold on internet. Proof: List of updates.

The greatest thing is that in case of databases made using an automated scraping script that takes less than 24 hours to run, you can request anytime to have database updated today free of charge. Once a customer request update and it is done, all existing customers will be notified to download latest update.

I use Easy Digital Downloads plugin for WordPress to generate database download links after payment, I set the links to expire in 1 year, and you can click your link again as many times you want to download latest version of database.

Moreover, after every update of each database, I click “resend receipt” in WordPress dashboard to each customer, and you receive a new email that reminds you that a new update is released.

The CORRECT way to make a car valuation service is to use a database with new car prices, another database that adjust price based on car age and/or miles driven, another database that adjust price based on state / ZIP code. I can provide you database with car prices as new (MSRP / showroom price), but not the rest.

Anyone can convert XLS to SQL: open .XLS file, do the necessary changes in Excel > save as > choose CSV format > go in your website cPanel > phpMyAdmin > create a MySQL database > import CSV file.

Starting from 2015 I provide CSV and SQL by default for small databases (Car Models List, Car Nameplates List, Year-Make-Model) at no extra charges (pay once and receive 3 file formats). I can provide for bigger databases at request.

If you buy a physical product from a real store, you can return it to store undamaged and get refund. But in case of digital car databases, returning is not possible. Since starting selling in 2012, as 2017 I done over 1000 sales and had only 3 or 4 cases of people asking for refunds. If any customer report problems I always choose to fix the problem rather than refunding, until every customer is satisfied.

The original databases I made for Europe (Car Models Encyclopedia, Car Models Database, Car Models & Engines Database) were made by entering data manually from AutoKatalog, a yearly publication made by Auto Motor und Sport, the leading German car magazine and one of the most reputable car magazines in the world. AutoKatalog is published yearly since 1957 in about 15-20 European countries.

I switched to PollDaddy because it have “other” (people can type their own answer) or limit the number of choices, thus giving me a better image what people are looking for.

A customer of Teoalida’s Car Database, previously a customer of CarListDB.com, forwarded me the following email received by him from glassguide.com.au:

I DO NOT have registration / owners data, and the companies who does have (car dealerships and insurance companies) must follow personal data protection laws and DO NOT share data of their customers to third-parties.

List of updatesBeen contacted by a lot of people asking for VIN database so I am getting interested in providing such type of data, BUT… VIN is unique per car and not per model so what I should do? A table with over 1 billion rows? (that is the number of cars currently driving around in the worlds). Australia Car Database SAMPLE.xls you can see column X with partial VIN. While this may be sufficient for certain applications, it may be not sufficient for a VIN decoding service.

Anyone looking for VIN database, please give me a SAMPLE database with few rows for few cars so I can understand how would you like the data to be formatted, and we will see if I can do the same for ALL cars!