Need to break out drivetrains
 

is there a way to break out vehicles by transmissions and 4x4 vs 2w dr? etc? at least suggest to people there vehicle descriptions contain that info

No, the only sorting we offer now is by engine type and body style. We could encourage more detailed descriptions but we have a lot of casual users who might not even know what to write.

I changed the instructions on the add a car page, under description. Now it says: Optional details about your car. (eg. "VW Jetta SEL 5-cylinder 170 hp..."). That should at least give new folks a suggestion to include more info about their trim level if they know it.

2WD / FWD vs. 4WD / AWD is useful info to know...

Absolutely. I'm not saying that it's not useful info to know. In fact there are dozens of attributes you could track that we don't provide a way to track. We are erring on the side of simplicity, and we know that's not going to appeal to everyone. We also know that keeping something simple to use could mean more people using that thing. So that's what we're trying to do. If we provide a form that includes a dozen different switches about intricate details of someone's car, there's a good portion of the population that will start to think, "this place isn't for me."

Our top goal is to get as many people as possible tracking and thinking about fuel economy. The fact that we get some nice stats to look at for comparing vehicles is a nice side effect of that.

I'm just revisiting this... i'm looking at replacement vehicles again.
with out this type of meta data, fuelly can't be used to try and compare vehicle mileage unless you are willing to pm car owners to get their transmission types.

If an individual car listing doesn't have a transmission type listed, the owner may not have entered the info when making the listing.