Car Filtering by Engine and Body Style
October 15, 2008 1:15 PM 
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We added a way to filter the list of cars by engine type and/or body style.
When you're browsing cars, you can click the new filter link to bring up two menus:
You can select an engine type and/or body style for that model, and click apply filter to narrow the listings on the page to just those matching cars. Here's what the menus look like:
In this example, the Honda Civic page has been limited to hybrids, so you can see averages across Civics with that type of engine. The number listed after the engine or body style type in the menu is the number of matching cars with that type of engine or style alone. (Not a combination of the two.) That might be confusing at first, but it should give you sense of the most popular engines/styles for that model.
You can also click hide filter if you have the filter menus open and you'd like them to go away.
As always, let us know here about any problems with the new filters. Thanks!
posted by pb at 1:15 PM
(5 comments total)
When you're browsing cars, you can click the new filter link to bring up two menus:
You can select an engine type and/or body style for that model, and click apply filter to narrow the listings on the page to just those matching cars. Here's what the menus look like:
In this example, the Honda Civic page has been limited to hybrids, so you can see averages across Civics with that type of engine. The number listed after the engine or body style type in the menu is the number of matching cars with that type of engine or style alone. (Not a combination of the two.) That might be confusing at first, but it should give you sense of the most popular engines/styles for that model.
You can also click hide filter if you have the filter menus open and you'd like them to go away.
As always, let us know here about any problems with the new filters. Thanks!
True bomber991, it's not as detailed as it could be. We don't ask people to add that level of detail when they create an impreza. So we're exposing the level of data that we have available. We made this decision for simplicity, to get people reporting mileage faster—but I agree that having even more detail about the cars would be nice.
posted by pb at 7:34 PM on October 15, 2008
posted by pb at 7:34 PM on October 15, 2008
Yeah, it's more about major differences like gas vs. diesel, gas vs. hybrid, or 4-cylinder vs. v6.
At the moment people don't self-report all the trim levels and engine options within each major category of engine type.
posted by mathowie at 8:47 PM on October 15, 2008
At the moment people don't self-report all the trim levels and engine options within each major category of engine type.
posted by mathowie at 8:47 PM on October 15, 2008
Great feature -- I've been anticipating this for a while! One thing it does in addition to organizing the data is reveal certain user errors (eg. reporting that your car has a "V4" engine, as several Civic owners have done).
posted by Smitty at 9:52 AM on October 16, 2008
posted by Smitty at 9:52 AM on October 16, 2008
Yeah, that's true, we knew that people using the site might not know details about their engine. That's one reason we tried to keep things extremely simple—we don't want to scare anyone away from using the site.
There is a V4 engine (that's why it's an option), but it's definitely not used in civics.
posted by pb at 10:33 AM on October 16, 2008
There is a V4 engine (that's why it's an option), but it's definitely not used in civics.
posted by pb at 10:33 AM on October 16, 2008
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