Your project is really great, I've never seen something similar, and congratulation for your hard work!
...but...
I have a few doubts about this project...
First: you said you classified the cars using their brand... but how do you do for cars like the so-called etceterini? I'm thinking about a lot of anonimous home-built "Fiat" with a lot of different bodies, (but also chassis, engine and other parts), and similar car without a name...
Second: It's only my humble opinion, but I don't think it's a good idea to merge all the cars you have in a single book... why? Because I think it would be a big confusion of names, without any sense... why don't you cut this big work in sections? If I am interested in unknown italian car makers from the 20s should I pay thousands of euros for the whole encyclopedia? I would have much preferred an encyclopedia for italian makers, an encyclopedia for german coachbuilder, an encyclopedia for american tuners etc... maybe it doesn't sound as "The most complete car encyclopedia" but in this way I think you left out a lot of possible customers which cannot afford it...
Third: One book every 2-3 months means that I buy the last one after a few years... and in a few years how many new brands/makers/models would be born?? It would be an anachronistic book...
Fourth: I like complete book... and this is not a complete book for sure... it is indeed the "most complete"... but (and I don't blame you for that, it's not a possible project) this is surely far from "the (unlikely) complete car encyclopedia"...
Personally I don't like the so called "complete" books, cause they are always incomplete, and I think this is a project that should stay on a database, not on a book... but obviously you cannot earn money from an internet project... and you cannot do such a project without money...
So... I wouldn't buy it... I cannot afford it and if a could I think I would spend my money in more "specific" books (or in an old car...)... but I think that if you are creating your big dream, this is great!! And you do it as you want to do it...
Congratulations!!
PS - Sorry for my bad english...
PS2 - Do you include also pre-1886 "cars" with steam or electric engine??
First of all, thank you for your good wishes and appreciation.
Don't worry about your English, i'm surprised mostly by your post, which i found very well balanced. You express very good personal point of views but in the same time, you are able to see my personal aspects too.
I will take your questions one by one:
1.Here it depends. Some of them can be found in the coachbuilt section of the car manufacturer, some of them under a separate name. There are a lot of rules i used, because although many people do not realize, but things are complicated either sorting way you choose.
In general, around the category you specified there are: coachbuilt models (which are listed to the coachbuilt section of a car manufacturer), cars built with parts from a specific car company (which are listed separately under their own name -if there is one, if not the person who built it- only if they can be identified as a different model from the donor car and some series production cars, slightly modified at home, which generally can not be found in this book (not to be understood that coachbuilt models are not included) as for this type of cars is very hard to use the photos (copyright) and there are probably millions of them, but there are also important exceptions in the book. At this last ones am referring especially to the home-tuned cars, with some little body mods.
2.It is absolutely impossible to merge all the cars in a single book. It would probably be the world's biggest book ever published and you would need a ladder to climb, so you can open the front cover. There will probably be 20.000 pages, from my estimation. I wonder how that would look like
?
Regarding the fact that you are interested in a section of the book only, and some other type of sorting and ordering the information, i can only tell you that it is very subjective, but also very understandable (please don't take this personally or offensive). I had more than 10 other different demands like the following:
-many people wished for this type of sorting as they wanted to see all the cars of a brand one by one and watch the evolution through time of a single model, or by what model it was replaced
-some wanted all the models to be sorted in chronological order
-some wanted separate books for each car categories
-etc
In conclusion there is no way to satisfy the wishes of everyone (or should i better say needs, since it is a product), because many times they contradict each other in sorting rules. So it's practically impossible.
Regarding the sorting by countries...i had it sorted that way, in the very early stage, lot of time ago, but moved to alphabetical because some factors:
-there are brands that moved their headquarters through time. I'll give you an example here, nut first of all i have to mention that this is a brand and model encyclopedia, not one of the car companies.
Example: AC brand, started in UK, moved it's production to Malta, now they are thinking to UK again. In the same time, cars under same AC brand are built not only by AC Cars Limited but also by AC Cars Gullwing, from Germany (a different company but cars are built under same brand).
The best example for an multinational Ac car is this: AC 378 GT Zagato and i'll quote myself "The car is designed by Zagato, built in South Africa by Hi-Tech Automotive, for the Gullwing Gmbh company, which had licensed the AC brand name, from AC Cars Limited.
(this is head hurting)
Also, what do you do with Ford, there are different or same models built all over the world. I'll give you an example. The Sierra was built in Europe, but there was built in South Africa a V8 powered version, in order to register a race car in the local championship, as there was a number of series production copies imposed. So ordering by country would have been hard and cause many problems.
So i have chosen the one that satisfy the most as you can not satisfy all, which is also the logical way for an encyclopedia. Because after lecturing it, the most common thing to use it for is to find information about a specific model. So you search the brand in the index, go to page, category and then find the model, very fast.
3. I know it's volumes are spread in time and some new cars and brands will appear, but that is inevitable. Generally when people comment on that, they do not realize one important thing: this has not been done before, it will have more than 20.000 pages (the most complete made before had, as far as i know, had around 1000 pages or so), nobody can do that in a year. There are financial issues and i will probably need 50 guys to lay the info on paper and lots and lots of other problems.
For the new models, after the book, there will be book of updates, released yearly.
Regarding cutting out some cars from it, that will never happen...
Nice to see you observed that i said "The most complete". I can not pretend it is complete, if a single car is missing, which probably is.
Regarding the success, i can only tell you this. There are a lot of customers already, which want to buy the whole series, even if they have the money or not and there are also quite a few, that would buy them all on spot, if they were released. One of them calculated that if he stops smoking, he would be able to buy it with no extra expense. I even used that idea and expressed it on forums before.
Some guys requested that the book to be delivered elsewhere not at home, mentioning that the wife do not need to know about it's cost or about the book.
So it all depends on various factors.
Thank you for the questions. I will answer any question, until starting volume two....
PS: Yes, they are also in the book.
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