Here’s one to file under “Proudly South African”: Carfolio.com, a repository of technical specifications for cars from around the world, has relaunched with a whole new look. Best of all, the site is completely coded and compiled here in South Africa
The website is the brainchild of petrolhead, Zak McGregor, who started the site in his spare time, in 2000. While it started as a side project, Zak has been at it full time for the last two years and his efforts have paid off: Carfolio is often cited as a technical source by international motoring publications. It also enjoys the distinction of being the most diverse motoring-based technical resource on the web. It has competition in the way of Wikipedia and specialist sites that cover certain niches, but the largest spread of automotive knowledge belongs to Carfolio.
Whether you’re looking for the exact engine displacement for an obscure Alfa Romeo that was only built in South Africa, or if you simply wondered whether there are manufacturers that start with a Z (yes, 14 of them), it’s all neatly arranged and easily accessible on Zak’s site.
McGregor says the site has been completely hand-coded, and doesn’t use any existing CMS.
“Back when I was implementing it as Carfolio, CMSes were not what they are today. So I wrote one, from scratch,” he says.
With its new layout things are still completely custom and hand-coded. Some of the new functionality was added to make the site compatible with mobile devices, as more and more people use smartphones and tablets to access the web. McGregor also says that he’s added new layouts and information that will make the information more useful to international visitors.
“As I drive the site towards a more useful buying resource for consumers, I’ve started to add things like UK tax bands, German CO2 effizienz classes,” explains McGregor. He hopes that his site will be come a global player when it comes to helping car-buyers make purchasing decisions. One feature that’s on the fast-track is pricing for each of the current models in the database.
Speaking of, Zak shared some statistics from the Carfolio information pool.
- 32 490 cars
- 1 272 manufacturers
- 3.84-million kilowatts (5 150 000 horsepower) combined output of all cars
- Oldest car: Model 1 Benz, 1885
- Newest car: BMW 4-series, October 2013
