Building a car anorak’s encyclopædia

28.12.2016/01.37

Above: The first-generation Mitsubishi Minica, though this isn’t the 1962 model. Now on Autocade—though hardly an iconic model. It’s the end of the Gregorian year, which means I get a bit of time to update Autocade. Since 2008, it’s mostly been a labour of love, and typically, the period after Christmas is when I get […]

Drivetribe will be a mecca for motorheads—Autocade readers welcome

22.11.2016/13.38

Now that the first episode of The Grand Tour has aired, and we’re nearing the official launch of Drivetribe (November 28), we’re beginning to see just how good an investment £160 million was for Amazon when it picked up the cast of The Goodies, I mean, Top Gear (sorry, I get those BBC shows mixed […]

Autocade reaches 8,000,000 page views; viewing rate up slightly since last million

05.03.2016/12.19

I had expected our car encyclopædia Autocade would reach 8,000,000 page views this month, just before its eighth anniversary. The difference was that this time, I was there last Monday GMT (the small hours of Tuesday in New Zealand) to witness the numbers tick over—almost. Usually, I find out about the milestones ex post […]

Autocade reaches 7,000,000 page views, growing at its quickest rate

10.10.2015/06.04

I was surprised to see that Autocade managed its 7,000,000th viewer some time this month, five months after the 6,000,000th. Considering it took three years to get to the first million, this means people are willing to use Autocade more regularly as a resource on the web. As something that started on the side, this […]

Autocade hits 6,000,000 page views: a few quick ﬁgures

09.05.2015/05.44

The Dongfeng Fengshen AX7, or a Renault with a Peugeot engine (and I don’t mean the PRV V6 or the old Douvrin), entered into Autocade this week. With Autocade hitting 6,000,000 page views earlier this week, here’s a quick anorak’s run-down on the rate of growth. In short: it’s about the same in terms of […]

Je suis Charlie

09.01.2015/01.24

I was watching France 24 about half an hour after the Charlie Hebdo attack and made the above graphic a few hours later, in support of press freedoms and the victims’ families, and showing solidarity with other members of the media. One friend has made it his Facebook profile photo and I followed suit about […]

All the Geelys on Autocade

01.12.2014/13.41

The Geely King Kong Hatchback, one of the new entries on the Autocade website. Not that I blogged it at the time, but Geely’s multi-brand strategy in 2009 felt doomed. Earlier this year, the company retreated, and brought everything from Englon, Gleagle and Emgrand back under its parent brand again. It wasn’t unlike Mazda’s […]

Autocade hits 5,000,000 views: what are its most read and least searched?

17.10.2014/07.02

With Autocade exceeding the 5,000,000 page view milestone (it’s on 5·12 million), I thought it might be fun to look at a few of the models on the site: the most popular, the least loved, and the first on the site. Looking at the stats, here are the most popular models. These shouldn’t be […]

The demise of Auto Katalog, and little to ﬁll the void

10.10.2014/04.40

It’s sad to read the news that Motor-Presse Stuttgart will not publish the Auto Katalog annual this year. That means last year’s, the 57th, could have been the ultimate edition. There are complaints on Amazon.de, and I was all ready to buy a copy myself—typically I would have an order put in through Magnetix […]

The Wikipedia game

02.07.2014/02.53

The contributors or editors of Wikipedia are often quick to make changes after errors are pointed out. A recent funny one was for the suburb of Cannons Creek, in Porirua, when Wikipedia told a friend’s son: Cannons Creek is a suburb of Porirua City approximately 22km north of Wellington in New Zealand. The citizens attempted […]