It took a while, but Autocade has now finally reached 29 million page views.
The statsâ page since the count was reset shows 1,362,506 views. Add that to the 27,647,011 recorded on March 19, 2022, and we have well and truly crossed the 29 million mark (by 9,517, in fact).
We probably got there yesterday given that the counter is no longer updated live (so much for improving technology), and I didnât get a chance to look in.
Sadly, this does mean the slowest growth in reader numbers since 2019.
Iâm sure part of it is down to Bingâs collapse, which must have shaved off at least six per cent of our daily totals.
What I have found fascinating is our model leaderboard. The Ford Taunus 80 had been leading for some time since the reset, but itâs been well and truly beaten by the current Toyota Corolla. What caused a sudden surge during August is anyoneâs guess, but all I know is that Iâm grateful for it. Itâs a newish page as well.
The Kia Morning (TA) is now third, another newer entry that shot up the ranks.
Iâve also been watching the pages for the Peugeot 206+ and 207 jostle for fourth place against the Daewoo Winstorm. (At the time of writing, the Winstorm is ahead by five views.) Another former leaderboard champ, the Ford Fiesta Mk VII, now sits in sixth, while the Renault MĂŠgane II, Opel Astra J, Rover SD1 and Ford Cortina Mk III complete the top 10.
Here’s how the Autocade traffic watch is going:
March 2008: launch
April 2011: 1,000,000 (three years for first million)
March 2012: 2,000,000 (11 months for second million)
May 2013: 3,000,000 (14 months for third million)
January 2014: 4,000,000 (eight months for fourth million)
September 2014: 5,000,000 (eight months for fifth million)
May 2015: 6,000,000 (eight months for sixth million)
October 2015: 7,000,000 (five months for seventh million)
March 2016: 8,000,000 (five months for eighth million)
August 2016: 9,000,000 (five months for ninth million)
February 2017: 10,000,000 (six months for 10th million)
June 2017: 11,000,000 (four months for 11th million)
January 2018: 12,000,000 (seven months for 12th million)
May 2018: 13,000,000 (four months for 13th million)
September 2018: 14,000,000 (four months for 14th million)
February 2019: 15,000,000 (five months for 15th million)
June 2019: 16,000,000 (four months for 16th million)
October 2019: 17,000,000 (four months for 17th million)
December 2019: 18,000,000 (just under three months for 18th million)
April 2020: 19,000,000 (just over three months for 19th million)
July 2020: 20,000,000 (just over three-and-a-half months for 20th million)
October 2020: 21,000,000 (three months for 21st million)
January 2021: 22,000,000 (three months for 22nd million)
April 2021: 23,000,000 (three months for 23rd million)
June 2021: 24,000,000 (two months for 24th million)
August 2021: 25,000,000 (two months for 25th million)
October 2021: 26,000,000 (two months for 26th million)
January 2022: 27,000,000 (three months for 27th million)
April 2022: 28,000,000 (three months for 28th million)
August 2022: 29,000,000 (four months for 29th million)
Toyotaâs unsuccessful Verossa was the latest entry into the database.
Ever since we had to reset the counter for Autocade in March, because of a new server and a new version of Mediawiki, itâs been interesting to see which pages are most popular.
The old ranking took into account everything from March 2008 to March 2022. With everything set to zero again, I can now see whatâs been most popular in the last few months.
Some of the top 20 were among the top pages before March 2022, but whatâs surprising is whatâs shot up into the top slots.
Over the course of half a day on Friday GMT, the Toyota Corolla (E210) page found itself as the top page, home page excepting. And the Kia Morning (TA) page shot up out of nowhere recently, too.
I know our page on the Corolla is number one on Mojeek for a search of that model but that canât be the only reason itâs done so well. I havenât studied the referrer data. A shame that link: no longer works on search engines.
I almost feel Iâve shot myself in the foot for promoting Duck Duck Go so much since 2010! But then I hopefully spared a lot of people from being tracked (as much) by the big G.
Weâve hit 4,600 models on Autocade, with the Toyota Will VS taking us to this point, but the stats show we are sitting on 1,180,548 views. We have to get to 1,352,989 on the new count before I can announce weâve reached 29 million page views.
Weâre looking at the lowest traffic on Autocade since 2019, and Iâm sure the collapse of the Bing index, taking down the indices of all associated search engines (Duck Duck Go, Qwant, etc.), is to blame. I used to see an increase of 100,000 every week, roughly, but not these days. (PS.: I was still observing this level when we first switched the site over, and the slower growth has probably coincided with when WorldWideWebSize.com recorded Bing’s plummet in late Mayâearly June.)
Autocade is the one site where we never changed the set-up, other than hosting provider and Mediawiki version. The other sites had various things done to them, with Cloudflare and HTTPS. So given the âinvisibleâ changesâchanges we had done before in years gone byâwe know âitâs not us, itâs themâ.
Iâve listed the three Will models (or WiLL to use the original styling) as Toyotas after I confirmed this with another motorhead, the very knowledgeable Atsuhiro Takeda. They were also always listed as Toyotas by Auto Katalog many years ago, and I believe also by Toutes les voitures du monde. Atsu confirmed that that was how he believed they should be indexed. Iâve had those Will publicity images for a long time and itâs nice theyâve finally gone online in Autocade.
The only oddity in the Autocade stats is the rise in hits for our page on the Kia Morning (TA), coming from nowhere and into sixth place among model pages. Whomever the Morning fans are, I thank you!
The Suzuki Swift: one of the saving graces on New Zealand’s top 10 list.
At the Opel relaunch briefing yesterday, I was shocked to find that these were New Zealandâs top selling vehicles for 2021. I knew about the first two, but had always assumed a Toyota Corolla would follow, plus some regular cars. From this, I gather the rest of New Zealand thinks the opposite to me. I personally believe petrol is expensive.
1. Ford Ranger
2. Toyota Hilux
3. Mitsubishi Triton
4. Mitsubishi ASX (RVR on the home market)
5. Toyota RAV4
6. Mitsubishi Outlander (presumably the outgoing one)
7. Mazda CX-5
8. Nissan Navara
9. Suzuki Swift
10. Kia Stonic
Not a very discerning lot, are we? We say we care about the environment yet enough of us have helped fuel the second biggest contributor to the carbon emissionsâ rise in the last 10 years: the crossover or SUV.
And Iâve driven those RVRs. Why are people buying, in 2021, a vehicle that feels like a taller, larger Colt from the 2000s?
I have no issue with those of you who really need an SUV or ute. But for those who pose, you arenât helping yourself or your planet. And even if you bought some electrified variant, I thought it was universally understood (certainly for any of us alive during the 1970s fuel crises and those who observed the aerodynamic trend of the 1980s) that tall bodies and big frontal areas would consume more energy.
Autocade did get to 27,000,000 page views some time last week, earning its latest million in two-and-a-half months. It was a slower pace of growth than what I had observed through the latter part of 2021, probably because I hadnât done too many updates to the site during Q4 (unsurprisingly, having had to deal with Instagram and Twitter deleting Lucireâs accounts, as well as a hacking attempt from the US, among other things). Only 20 models had been added since the last million milestone, taking the total to 4,544. That was a record, having been reached in one day under two months; nothing quite as impressive this time out, which is only fair if there were fewer updates.
The latest model in the encyclopĂŚdia is the Toyota Chaser (X30), which isnât the prettiest vehicle line, but I guess it is more interesting than yet another SUV! The image came courtesy of Carfolio, which generously gave me a treasure trove of Toyota materials.
March 2008: launch
April 2011: 1,000,000 (three years for first million)
March 2012: 2,000,000 (11 months for second million)
May 2013: 3,000,000 (14 months for third million)
January 2014: 4,000,000 (eight months for fourth million)
September 2014: 5,000,000 (eight months for fifth million)
May 2015: 6,000,000 (eight months for sixth million)
October 2015: 7,000,000 (five months for seventh million)
March 2016: 8,000,000 (five months for eighth million)
August 2016: 9,000,000 (five months for ninth million)
February 2017: 10,000,000 (six months for 10th million)
June 2017: 11,000,000 (four months for 11th million)
January 2018: 12,000,000 (seven months for 12th million)
May 2018: 13,000,000 (four months for 13th million)
September 2018: 14,000,000 (four months for 14th million)
February 2019: 15,000,000 (five months for 15th million)
June 2019: 16,000,000 (four months for 16th million)
October 2019: 17,000,000 (four months for 17th million)
December 2019: 18,000,000 (just under three months for 18th million)
April 2020: 19,000,000 (just over three months for 19th million)
July 2020: 20,000,000 (just over three-and-a-half months for 20th million)
October 2020: 21,000,000 (three months for 21st million)
January 2021: 22,000,000 (three months for 22nd million)
April 2021: 23,000,000 (three months for 23rd million)
June 2021: 24,000,000 (two months for 24th million)
August 2021: 25,000,000 (two months for 25th million)
October 2021: 26,000,000 (two months for 26th million)
January 2022: 27,000,000 (three months for 27th million)
Thank you again for your support and hopefully thereâll be more than 20 entries in time for the next million!
I always had decent pencil cases at kindergarten in Hong Kong and then when I started school in New Zealand. Usually they were car-themed but the pièce de rÊsistance was this one, far nicer than what my classmates in my new home country had.
While other kids were into Star Wars and things I had no interest in at that age, I could at least show off my badass side with my Shaftâs Big Score pencil case. John Shaft isnât going to muck around with pussy stuff like the force.
I was thinking earlier tonight how cars were the one thing that helped me navigate Aotearoa when I got here with my parents. I might not have understood the culture immediately, and very little outside the faces of my family was familiar to me. But I saw Toyota Corollas (the E20s) and Honda Civics outside. And BMC ADO16s. These at least were an external source of familiarity, since they were commonplace in Hong Kong. A neighbour had a four-door Civic back in Homantin, the first car whose steering wheel I ever sat behind as a child.
The cars here in New Zealand were much older generally, since there was more of a DIY fix-it culture, and Hong Kong prospered later, resulting in a newer fleet. Those early days were like a history lesson on what had gone before in the 1950s and 1960s, filling in the gaps. But my eyes still went to those newer 1970s shapes. Curves? Who wants curves when you can have boxy shapes and those groovy vinyl roofs?!
I didnât say I had taste at age four.
Itâs bittersweet to get news of the Chevrolet Corvette from whatâs left of GM here in New Zealand, now a specialist importer of cars that are unlikely to sell in any great number. And weâre not unique, as the Sino-American firm pulls out of entire regions, and manufactures basically in China, North America, and South America. Peter Hanenbergerâs prediction that there wonât be a GM in the near future appears to be coming true. Whatâs the bet that the South American ranges will eventually be superseded by Chinese product? Ford is already heading that way.
Inconceivable? If we go back to 1960, BMC was in the top 10 manufacturers in the world.
Out of interest, I decided to take four yearsâ1990, 2000, 2010, and 2020âto see who the top 10 car manufacturers were. I havenât confirmed 1990âs numbers with printed sources (theyâre off YouTube) and I donât know exactly what their measurement criteria are. Auto Katalog 1991â2 only gives country, not world manufacturer, totals and that was my most ready source.
Tables for 2000 and 2010 come from OICA, when they could be bothered compiling them. The last is from Daily Kanban and the very reliable Bertel Schmitt, though he concedes these are based on units sold, not units produced, due to the lack of data on the latter.
2000
1 GM
2 Ford
3 Toyota
4 Volkswagen
5 DaimlerChrysler
6 PSA
7 Fiat
8 Nissan
9 Renault
10 Honda
2010
1 Toyota
2 GM
3 Volkswagen (7,341,065)
4 Hyundai (5,764,918)
5 Ford
6 Nissan (3,982,162)
7 Honda
8 PSA
9 Suzuki
10 Renault (2,716,286)
If Renaultâs and Nissanâs numbers were combined, and they probably should be at this point, then they would form the fourth largest grouping.
2020
1 Toyota
2 Volkswagen
3 Renault Nissan Mitsubishi
4 GM
5 Hyundai
6 Stellantis
7 Honda
8 Ford
9 Daimler
10 Suzuki
For years we could predict the GMâFordâToyota ordering but I still remember the headlines when Toyota edged GM out. GM disputed the figures because it wanted to be seen as the worldâs number one. But by 2010 Toyota is firmly in number one and GM makes do with second place. Ford has plummeted to fifth as Volkswagen and Hyundaiâby this point having made its own designs for just three and a half decadesâovertake it.
Come 2020, with the American firmsâ expertise lying in segment-quitting ahead of competing, theyâve sunk even further: GM in fourth and Ford in eighth.
Itâs quite remarkable to me that Hyundai (presumably including Kia and Genesis) and Honda (including Acura) are in these tables with only a few brands, ditto with Daimler AG. Suzuki has its one brand, and thatâs it (if you want to split hairs, of course thereâs Maruti).
Toyota has Lexus and Daihatsu and a holding in Subaru, but given its broad range and international salesâ strength, it didnât surprise me that it has managed to have podium finishes for the last three decades. Itâs primarily used its own brand to do all its work, and thatâs no mean feat.
Iâm surprised we donât see the Chinese groups in these tables but many are being included in the othersâ totals. For instance, SAIC managed to shift 5,600,482 units sold in 2020 but some of those would have been counted in the Volkswagen and GM totals.
I wonât go into the reasons for the US manufacturersâ decline here, but things will need to change if they donât want to keep falling down these tables. Right now, it seems they will continue to decline.
The Dongfeng Aeolus AX7. But just where does Aeolus sit when it comes to indexing in Autocade?
This is something that might have to come out in the wash, and it might take years.
I think we can all agree that Ssangyong is a marque or a make, and Korando is a model. Never mind that thereâs currently a basic Korando, the Korando Sports (a pick-up truck) and a Korando Turismo (a people mover), none of which really have much connection with the other, name aside. We are as comfortable with this as we once were with the Chevrolet Lumina and Lumina APV, the Ford Taurus and Taurus X, and the Toyota Mark X and Mark X Zio. So far so good.
But when do these drift into being sub-brands? BMW calls i a sub-brand, but as far as cataloguing in Autocade goes, it doesnât matter, as the model names are i3 or i8 (or a number of ix models now coming out). Audiâs E-Tron is its parallel at Ingolstadt, and here we do have a problem, with a number of E-Tron models unrelated technically. Itâs not like Quattro, where there was the (ur-) Quattro, then Quattro as a designation, and everyone accepted that.
Similarly, the Chinese situation can be far from clear.
Many years ago, GAC launched a single model based on the Alfa Romeo 166 called the Trumpchi. So far so good: we have a marque and model. But it then decided to launch a whole bunch of other cars also called Trumpchi (the original became the Trumpchi GA5, to distinguish it from at least eight others). Some sources say Trumpchi is a sub-brand, others a brand in its own right, but we continue to reference it as a model, since the cars have a GAC logo on the grille, just as the GAC Aion EVs have a GAC logo on the grille. (The latter is also not helped with Chinese indices tending to separate out EVs into âNew Energy Vehicleâ listings, even when their manufacturers donât.)
I feel that we only need to make the shift into calling a previous model or sub-brand a brand when itâs obvious on the cars themselves. Thatâs the case with Haval, when it was very clear when it departed from Changcheng (Great Wall). Senia is another marque that spun off from FAW: it began life with the FAW symbol on the grille, before Seniaâs own script appeared on the cars.
The one that confounds me is Dongfeng Aeolus, which was make-and-model for a long time, but recently Aeolus has displaced the Dongfeng whirlwind on the grille of several models. We have them currently listed in Autocade with Dongfeng Aeolus as a new marque, since thereâs still a small badge resembling the whirlwind on the bonnet. The Dongfeng Aeolus AX7 retains the whirlwind, but has the Aeolus letters prominently across the back, but to muddle it up, the AX7 Pro has the new Aeolus script up front. These canât be two different marques but the visual cues say they are.
Maybe weâll just have to relegate Aeolus back to model status, and do what Ssangyong does with the Korando (or Changcheng with the Tengyi). These are the things that make life interesting, but also a little confusing when it comes to indexing an encyclopĂŚdia.
Some interesting traffic patterns at Autocade. At the time of writing, two models have been added: the Audi A2 and the Daimler DE36. Theyâve netted 5 and 2 views respectively, which is what youâd expect for new pages.
The last significant updates, when models were added, took place on December 13. The last model added was the Toyota Corona Mark II (X10), which has amassed an incredible 1,409 views. I would expect around 100â200 for a page of its age. Here are the views of the latest 20:
Not that Iâm complaining one little bit, but the figures for the third to ninth entries are anomalous; the subsequent ones are where Iâd expect things to be. The Lancia Lybra link has had some social activity and the Opel Rekord C page is quite well linked on Autocade, so potentially people (or spiders) have hit it, but that doesnât explain the 690 for the Morgan Plus Six. The Toyopet remedied an old 404, but again Iâm surprised at the figure.
To whomever has been visiting this much, I do thank you. We may crack the 18 million mark before 2019 is out, and weâve netted a million page views on Autocade in record time. More on that after we get the next 14,000 page views.
Incidentally, the Po.st sharing gadgets across all our sites are down. Anyone else?
As a child of the 1970s, I was exposed to this English word: new. Now, before you say that that isnât anything special, for some reason, in the â70s, there was an obsession with newness. It wasnât like the news (by this I mean the plural of new) of Amsterdam or Zealand, but an adjective that was adapted to really emphasize that you should pay attention and consume, consume, consume.
Perhaps the earliest exposure was a Tomica model I had: the Blue Whale Crown. The base plate and box read âToyota New Crownâ. Even as a child, I wondered: what happens to the old Crown models? And what happens to this Crown model when a new new Crown comes out? It didnât matter: Toyota wanted us to live in the present and bask in the newness, and back in the early 1970s, this Crown certainly looked like nothing that had come from Toyota prior, or since. It was almost saying, âYes, we know it looks weird, but hey, itâs ânewâ, so that means itâs good!â
The real car flopped (relatively speaking; they still shifted plenty given top Japanese managers still needed transportation), and it was the last generation of Crown to be sold in the US, but to me it remains iconic, even if it is garish. After a mere three years on sale, very short even by Japanese standards, its âNewâ successor emerged in 1974 with all the idiosyncrasies gone. Conservatism ruled in this segment, at least till fairly recently. The old toys hung round, still ânewâ, so even if your parents bought you one in 1975 or 1976, you could still relish the adjective.
It wasnât a case of Japlish. It was all over television as well. When we emigrated here, the Anglophone television introduced me to The New Dick Van Dyke Show. Never mind that I had never seen the old Dick van Dyke show at this point. This was the white-haired man doing the New Zealand Fire Service PSAs. Everyone knew him. And why was it The New? Because we needed to be told that despite the same network in its home country (CBS), Dick van Dyke wasnât playing Rob Petrie, but a new character altogether. Please donât take this as a continuation of the previous one.
Here are the News:The New Dick Van Dyke Show; The New Perry Mason; and The New Avengers.
Van Dyke, in his autobiography, recounts a fan coming up to him berating him for leaving Laura (Mary Tyler Mooreâs character from the earlier The Dick Van Dyke Show), so itâs not as though the qualifier worked; goodness knows how the same fan would have computed The Mary Tyler Moore Show, on the same night as The New Dick Van Dyke Show. Maybe that was proof that Rob had left Laura or vice versa and they were forging ahead with their separate lives. The New Dick Van Dyke Show wasnât alone. A couple of years later, there was The New Perry Mason (1973), starring Monte Markham in the title role (though no one ever called him âNewâ). The Fred Steiner theme was nowhere to be heard. Iâve seen a few of these, and they are pretty good in a 1970s sort of wayâwhich is to say more exterior filming and more flash cars (product placement was growing) on the back lot and on location. To make it more confusing, when Perry Mason returned in a bunch of TV movies in the 1980s, starting with Perry Mason Returns, it wasnât Markham, but original actor Raymond Burr once more. You see, it wasnât The New Perry Mason Returns. The New Perry Mason starred a different actor, so I can comprehend its Newness, and at least the presence of another actor underscored this. It didnât do that well, which is probably why hardly anyone remembers it. Probably more people remember Markham as the Seven Million Dollar Man. Iâm not kidding.
One that I do remember extremely well was The New Avengers, in 1976. Again, given when I was born, I had no exposure to The Avengers, but The New Avengers was a favourite of mine then, and I bought the DVDs when I saw them decades later. Unlike the other two series, this was a direct continuation, though it wasnât explained just how John Steed returned to Earth after Tara King blasted them both into space when they had their Endgame in 1969; but we do know they enjoyed Laurent Perrier champagne when they got back. Itâs a third definition of new as far as the TV shows were concerned, with the same motive: if you want to be seen as in, hip and groovy, come watch the new.
Perhaps more obscure were one-off TV movies: Halloween with the New Addams Family (1977), which had the same cast (grandmother aside, as actress Blossom Rock was ill), and where the new serves no useful purpose other than attempting to sell us on newness where there is none; and The New Maverick (1978), which sees the return of James Garner as Bret and Jack Kelly as Bart, though thereâs no sign of Roger Moore as Beau (presumably too busy being James Bond) and Robert Colbert as Brent, but it did introduce a first cousin once removed called Ben Maverick (Charles Frank). I imagine Ben is the new Maverick, and a short-lived TV series, Young Maverick, did appear afterwards.
No one really did much more New shows after thisâit seemed to be a 1970s phenomenon. With one exception: CI5: the New Professionals in the 1990s, an attempt to recapture the glory days of The Professionals but winding up more like episodes of Bugs. There, new sort of meant old, reminding us that some of the writing and directing was out of step with late 1990s’ audience expectations; and, with the greatest of respect, showed that certain parties were past their prime. By then, we had had seven episodes of Bodyguards, which perhaps showed how a modern-day Professionals might be. All that needed was to be âladdifiedâ for the FHM audience, at least in theory, and certainly, after 9-11, there may have been some scope for an élite, globally coordinated, anti-terrorist squad (which is what The New Professionals suggests the fictional CI5 unit morphed into, probably to accommodate its backers and the South African location filming in some episodes). But in 1998, there was less of an appetite for revival shows, especially when the top-rated series were ER and Friends, and the Americans were a year away from The Sopranos. Britain, meanwhile, was gripped with the tension of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and the FHM lads were more than catered for by Babes in the Wood.
PS., December 6: How could I forget this item of regular childhood viewing? From the US, in 1979.