{"id":5144,"date":"2010-03-05T12:00:51","date_gmt":"2010-03-05T12:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.teoalida.com\/cardatabase\/?p=5144"},"modified":"2025-03-02T12:55:25","modified_gmt":"2025-03-02T12:55:25","slug":"autokatalog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.teoalida.com\/cardatabase\/autokatalog\/","title":{"rendered":"What is the source of data?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The original car databases I made since 2003 for European market (Car Models Encyclopedia, Car Models Database, Car Models & Engines Database) were made by entering data manually from AutoKatalog<\/strong>, a yearly publication made by Auto Motor und Sport<\/a><\/strong>, 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 created an original compilation \u201cMade by Teoalida\u201d with NO equivalent on internet (except on websites that purchased database from me).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A new era started in 2015: web scraping<\/a><\/strong>. Using scraping techniques I quickly created over 50 databases<\/a><\/strong> by 2018, including the best-selling car databases for America, India, Middle East, Australia, motorcycles database, real estate databases, mobile phones, etc. The website I source data from is indicated in each database’s page.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Auto<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

AutoKatalog provide 38 columns of technical specs (in 2014 issue), worldwide models, but it focus primarily for cars sold in Germany (where 100% completion is guaranteed) and for other European countries where the magazine is published. It does also include car models not sold in Europe but they seems to be added at random basis just to fill up the pages, without guaranteeing completion for any market outside Europe. Would have been anyway difficult to make a complete worldwide database due to differences between markets of sale (read more America vs Europe and rest of world<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Same company also publish quarter-yearly a small brochure with prices plus 9 columns of data, European market only. To make things simpler, the Car Models & Engines Database<\/a> was originally compiled just with these 9 columns, 3 additional columns added at my interest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had romanian AutoCatalog 1997, 1999, 2001-2009, so my car database was originally made to contain cars starting from mid-1990s to present. Since 2009 AutoCatalog was no longer published in Romania.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After publishing the car database on website in 2011 and having few sales in 2012, in November 2012 I bought from eBay the german version of AutoKatalog, collection 1991-2013, and not just brought database up-to-date, but also extended historical coverage to 1990. In February 2013 I bought 1983-1990 too and further extended the database historical coverage. I kept buying old books until 2014 when I completed collection 1968 + 1970-2014 (46 books), seen in above photo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I paid about 30 euro for each 1970s book. 1960s books cost 50-60 euro and the very first 1957 issue I found it on eBay at price of 250 euro! Since just few people are interested in such old cars, and the ones interested would like also pre-war cars when AutoKatalog was not existing, I do not plan to invest another ~600 euro just to add in database 10 more years (1960-1970).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Auto Katalog 2015 was added on Amazon.de and many other online shops, but publication was cancelled in last moment, leaving lots of fans disgruntled and my database was put in hiatus. The 2014 magazine published in September 2013 became last issue. After this I decided to use ADAC Datenbank as main source of data for my car database. Surprisingly, AutoKatalog was again published in Germany since 2015 but did not bought it anymore. AutoKatalog 2015 was published in Croatia at least but I do not know how to buy it, maybe if YOU are from Croatia you can help me buying from local shops and ship it to me in Romania.<\/p>\n\n\n\n