Data & sources

Primary sources

AllCarIndex discovery universe

We snapshot the public AllCarIndex sitemap as a worldwide identity-discovery denominator. Its definition is intentionally broader than this register’s admitted road-vehicle marques and includes kit builders, prototype projects, design studios, one-offs, and powersports makers. Slug and country agreement is treated as a review hint, not a stable identity match; only explicit curated scope decisions resolve an identity, and all other candidates remain in an auditable review queue. AllCarIndex text and images are not copied into the catalog.

Wikidata

The bulk of the model catalog comes from Wikidata — every item that is an instance of (or subclass of) automobile model (Q3231690), capturing manufacturer, inception/dissolution year, country of origin, body style, English aliases, direct entity type, Commons image and linked Wikipedia article. Identity assertions retain their snapshot retrieval date and field-level provenance. Wikidata content is released under CC0.

Wikipedia model extracts

Validated lead extracts provide source-attributed model background under CC BY-SA 4.0. A catalog source link is attached only when the extract ledger resolves by the current record identity or a unique Wikidata QID; route-only and stale matches remain rejected audit rows. Revision, attribution and licence metadata remain in the extract ledger and are validated before publication.

NHTSA vPIC

The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's vPIC API provides authoritative US-market data for vehicles 1981 and later. The data is U.S. federal public-domain and may be used freely.

EPA FuelEconomy.gov

Engine, fuel-type and fuel-economy figures for US-market models since 1984 come from the U.S. EPA's FuelEconomy.gov dataset, aggregated from its per-trim ratings to one summary per model. U.S. federal public-domain.

Natural Resources Canada

Canadian-market model years, vehicle classes, combined consumption, and electric range come from Natural Resources Canada fuel-consumption ratings for new light-duty retail vehicles from 1995 through 2026. Model years remain market observations and are never promoted to worldwide production ranges. The snapshot is used under the Open Government Licence – Canada.

Wikimedia Commons

Photographs come from Wikimedia Commons, released under various Creative Commons and public-domain licences. Primary record images link to their Commons file page when that file identity is available; creator and licence metadata remain authoritative there.

Curated historical data

For pre-1920 marques, coachbuilders, and one-offs missing from Wikidata, we maintain a small hand-curated seed list in scripts/curated_seeds.py, drawing on standard reference works — Beverly Rae Kimes & Henry Austin Clark, The Standard Catalog of American Cars; G.N. Georgano, The Complete Encyclopedia of Motorcars.

every.autos editorial

A small number of the most significant models carry an every.autos editorial essay — original prose written by us, not excerpted from anywhere. These are held to the same no-fabrication standard as the data: every essay is backed by at least two independent cited sources, every factual claim is checked against those sources before publishing, and every number in the text must trace to a source or to a catalog field (a validator rejects any that doesn't). Essays are shown in a distinct dark panel labelled "every.autos editorial", with their sources listed inline. Confidence is stated on each. Spotted an error? Every claim links its sources — corrections ship with the source that proves them.

Licensing & attribution

Wikipedia text (model backgrounds, brand histories, and country industry summaries) is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Every place we show it carries a per-item credit naming the source article and linking the licence; our own editorial prose is kept textually separate and is never blended with it.

Wikidata is CC0. NHTSA vPIC and EPA FuelEconomy.gov are U.S. federal public domain. Natural Resources Canada is used under the Open Government Licence – Canada. Wikimedia Commons images link back to their file pages, where per-image licence and attribution are recorded.

Coverage and roadmap

No public dataset covers every automobile worldwide. The coverage ledger therefore measures named source universes instead of asserting an unknowable global percentage. Planned additions include European type-approval and registration datasets and other national open-data sources. Production dates, model years, origin, assembly location, sales market, and registry market will remain distinct assertions as the catalog moves to a normalized database.