3

I am British and making a website about cars in the United Kingdom; it's not a consumer-type site (like Consumer Guide, Motor Trend etc.) but a personal site with opinions and some facts about the cars (engine size, cc etc.).

It is not a car valuation site but an opinion site, and the site's footer indicates this. Consider it as a personal opinion and automobile history site.

I did look up "new car prices [year] UK" or "new car specs [year] UK", "list price cars [year] UK" on Google but couldn't find them at all, or indeed any results that were relevant.

I was looking for new car prices [list price/MSRP] from the 1979 to now - and would really appreciate it if someone could find the data for me, preferably in XLS format for Microsoft Excel (2003) as I am using Excel 2008 on OSX. I was trying to categorise prices by reg-plate/year, e.g. 1979 V, 1980 V, 1980 W, 1981 W etc. as specs and prices do change per year. This also applies to commercial vehicles too [Ford Transit, Volkswagen Transporter etc.] for specs and prices, not just automobiles.

The only reason I need this data is twofold; it is being used as a primary/secondary source, and additional data for with the car pages, e.g. specs and new prices for a Ford Fiesta with 1994 L-reg, 1994 M-reg, 1995 M-reg etc. but the XLS file would be split by year/reg plate, e.g. Sheet1 is 1979 V, Sheet 2 is 1980 V, Sheet3 is 1980 W etc.

This is (at a guess) an example of how the data would be:


AUDI

Model No. of Doors Bodystyle Engine List Price

A4 2.0 SE 4 Saloon 4/1984cc £17,885

2001 Y New Car Prices


(This is only a hypothetical; I don't actually have the data to hand but it's an example of how the Excel columns would be, and my attempt at rendering them within the syntax here). I have also got a Javascript inflation calculator so people can work out what their car cost in today's money (embedded as per the rules on the script at enter link description here ) which is one reason I am looking for the old list prices - in the footer of the site is a PHP link which is basically "How much was your car in old money? Click here to convert to today's money now" using PHP's include function.

I looked online but could find only SIMI Ireland's data here and Autoweek.nl's prices here for the Dutch market - link but none on British car prices.

The site is a PHP-powered one, and I am going to use the data on all the pages about the cars. Currently the website is non-public, being on an AMPPS server on OSX.

One final question, would there be any legal problems using this data or not publically, considering that it's facts, which aren't protected by copyright, only the expression of facts? I'm not sure where this falls legally, considering the nature of the data.

1 Answer 1

1

Have a try of the gov.uk site. This particular link has some of the information which might get you part of the way.

Since you are not looking to run a business, doing a "screen scrape" of the data might work using something like R with the rvest package. Then you could use the Parkers and ClassicCars websites and pull off info building up data as you go. If you are not a programmer, then this will be tricky.

1
  • I did try Parkers but found specs but not RRPs alongside them.
    – avenas8808
    Commented May 23, 2016 at 18:58

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.