Car Models Encyclopedia

Download SAMPLE:
Car Models Encyclopedia .DOC (BMW and Dacia)

Buy FULL encyclopedia (all makes):

•  Cars produced in Europe 1945-present, cars imported in Europe 1980-present, 1500+ models, 4 cents per model – 60.00 USD

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Last update: 2015 (I abandoned Word documents due to poor sales, to focus on Excel databases)

Description

You may ask WTF is this… in the era of Excel and SQL databases.

Car Models Encyclopedia contains external car dimensions (length, width, height, wheelbase), weight, cargo space, and list of engines (displacement and horsepower). Each piece of text (Make titles, Model titles, Car class, Body text, etc) is a separate style in Word, easy to manipulate the appearance, changing formatting of one row will change all the rows in entire file.

It can be compared with the info boxes seen on Wikipedia in each car model page (this is a coincidence, when I started my own encyclopedia I did not had internet access and was not aware of Wikipedia). It dates back from the childhood hobby for writing books in Word that can be printed (although it was optimized for on-screen viewing).

Coverage: 1945-present with 99% completion for 1980s-present, for worldwide cars sold in European market (and few bonus cars not imported in Europe). See the list of manufacturers included.

History

In 2001-2003 (age 12-14 years old) I wrote some kind of encyclopedia in Word, collecting data from every car magazine that came in my hands (I did not had internet connection until 2005), it had 2-4 pages for each car model, and was a MESS without a standard format across model.

In 2003 I had 3 main projects: Car Models List.DOC, Car Models Timeline.XLS, and The BIG Car Database.XLS, in 2004 I started 2 additional projects: Car Database List.DOC (sorted by manufacturer) and Car Database Timeline.XLS (sorted by class and year, for purpose of comparing how cars evolved in dimensions over last 50 years). While first 3 had worldwide cars, for the next 2 I included only models from European manufacturers.

In 2011 I published above projects on website for first time, for free download except The BIG car database.

In 2012 I added models from other continents sold in Europe and published for sale one package with 2 files:

• The Word document was the “base”, complete with all vehicles produced (1100 models counted), including every dimension change, each model written in a standard format, 4-10 models per page.
• The Excel spreadsheet included only models with dimensions available (~950 models estimated), it showed dimensions of original model launch, omitting possible dimension changes at various facelifts, to be clean-looking.

The package got several sales during 2012, and I noticed that the customers are companies buying for Excel spreadsheet  for programming use, rather than for reading Word documents.

In December 2012 I re-sorted the Excel table alphabetically (instead of timeline) and added all vehicles from Word document, even those with no dimensions available. Both files reached 1220 car models as January 2013, Word document having 160 pages.

I started selling separately, Excel spreadsheet as Car Models Database and the Word document as Car Models Encyclopedia (at half price). The BIG car database became Car Models & Engines Database.

One person complained that this .DOC is hard to read. Meantime many website visitors complained that the website itself is crowded, cluttered, etc, suggesting to split website paragraphs into smaller pieces and add additional spaces around. Maybe the problem “hard to read” was not for being .DOC, but due to the style of writing data in in-line paragraphs?

So, in July 2013 I redesigned the encyclopedia, putting each piece of data on separate row, instead of original in-line paragraphs to save paper space. The Word document grew instantly from 160 to 260 pages, with 2-6 models per page. I started a slow updating process, and in October 2013 I released new version with 1430 car models on 320-page file.

Compare 2005-2012 original format vs 2013 improved format

By end-2013 I exceeded 1500+ car models, but I became worried that I am wasting time, as the Word document did not got a single sale during whole year. I stopped updating Word encyclopedia to focus on Excel databases which generate sales.

Probably automobile enthusiasts may appreciate this Word encyclopedia but they don’t pay money, while customers who pay money turned to be programmers and other professionals who need structured data in Excel format.

In May 2015 I done a 10-minute aesthetic change of Word file to align it with my new style of books, reduce colors and make it more printer-friendly.

One customer purchased encyclopedia in 2015 and another one in 2016, I emailed them asking how they use this Word file, but nobody answered.

POLL

See also: results of the old poll (9 votes 2013-2014)

How such Word encyclopedia can be used?

Shortly after moving to WordPress in August 2012, I got an idea in December 2012 to convert the above Word document into a a car blog with 1500+ posts, completed with car photos, allowing you to search and filter by tags for car classes, year of launch, etc.

However, customers warned me that good websites store data in MySQL database, to allow car comparisons, reviews, etc, NOT blog-style posts, so I abandoned the idea of making a car blog. Making a MySQL-based website exceed my knowledge, hiring web developers cost money, maintaining updates cost time, and I don’t know if earnings would cover investment.

In 2013 I was thinking to sell the encyclopedia as e-book in PDF format, completed with images, but adding 1500+ images will make the file very big… is anyone willing to purchase such thing?