Has anyone found a good vehicle spreadsheet or database? When I get a hankering for another car I always agonize over weights, wheelbases, lengths, engine options, etc.
Car specifications from all manufacturers in the world. Classic and current automobile models listed, including sports cars, supercars, antique cars and mundane.
I have a few standard catalogs and I can individually look up things but that's tedious. Say for instance I wanted to know what the longest station wagon is, or the lightest RWD car ever produced. With a spreadsheet I could just sort by a column, or a database I could search. Kinda like when you're shopping for tires on Tire Rack.
Sort by price, treadwear, and rating to help you pick the right one. Mguar wrote: In reply to curtis73: Well how many data points should we list? How are things like affordability, reliability, and commonality calculated? For my purposes I won't need all of that, but some people would. For instance, if I were to buy a 68 Spitfire I wouldn't care about engine reliability because I have dreams of a Toyota driveline swap. I wonder if there should be a customer rating system kinda like the stars on Netflix, then the ratings would average out. One guy who thinks his MG was reliable would be counteracted by an MG hater who never got his running.
Kind of a way to take subjective input and make it a little more objective. As far as commonality, one could get a ballpark idea from production numbers. I'm thinking of length, width, height, curb weight, drive type, production numbers, available engines/transmissions, etc. Basically I want to turn all those Standard Catalogs into a huge database.
Woody wrote: I was wondering about a similar resource the other day. Is there any good list of exterior engine and transmission dimensions? It would be very helpful when thinking about LSx swap candidates. I'd like to see how the GM engine compares dimensionally to the engines that cars came with. I've found very few. There is an engine weights page here and I found a jpg of an old book page that listed some dimensions of the old-school american engines.
Its nice because it lists the side the starter is on, the fuel pump, etc. I would love to have this kind of database to refer to. The best I've found is MSN Autos: But they are a mainstream source, so they focus more on recent cars. If it's much older than the 90s, you're out of luck. Similar for places like Edmunds. I love the crowdsourced Google Docs idea.
I have a pile of old car magazines that I could refer to and contribute. Personally, I think the database should only contain objective, measurable attributes like weight, wheelbase, engine displacement, etc. It starts to become very subjective once you get into things like reliability. I'd also like to have some way of noting the source for the numbers, since there will be discrepancies.
Used Ford Vehicle Specs
Safety Sources Canadian Vehicle Specifications The Canadian Vehicle Specifications (CVS) consists of a database of original vehicle dimensions, used primarily in collision investigation and reconstruction, combined with a search engine. The database is compiled annually by the Collision Investigation and Research Division of Transport Canada. The current release of the software is Version 2017.2, and is available for downloading as the archive file: To install the program, unzip the files contained in the archive cvs20172.zip to any folder, then run the program winspecs.exe. A Help Button has been added at the top right display screen to access the CVS User Guide. A help file, providing information on program installation and use, plus contact information for reporting bugs and obtaining technical support, is included in the distribution. The installed package now includes the dBase files. It also includes a Microsoft operating system file msvbvm50.dll, which is required when running Vista.