The view on what way to use years differ a lot and cause a great deal of confusion, especially since neither way is wrong.
But I do believe that the use of modelyear is the most common practice. And I think it´s said that the yearfield we have should be used for modelyear.

The term Modelyear is somewhat complex and challenge our sense of order since it rarely match the calender year. Mostly it runs from late summer or early fall to the beginning of next summer. Sometimes it begins already in the spring, like the 1951 Kaiser that came out early 1950 or the Ford Mustang when 1965 vehicles could be bought already in april 1964. Sometimes production goes on for years, like the first Volvo PV 444. They were built as 1947 models up til 1950.
Sometimes there´s a modelchange during a normal modelyear like Mercedes-Benz did in 1968 when the W110 body was replaced by W114/115, both types were available on the market as 1968 models.

Another way to go is just focusing on the year of introduction, or when it was built. But then we more easily gets into "trouble" with cars like the Mercedes example above. Mostly it´s of course no major problem, the change is made sometime during the year and then production runs for a couple of years with minor changes until next facelift. But in some cases we have acces to facts from vehicle registrys through the licenseplates.

Licenseplates sometimes gives us clues or answers, but one has to careful with what the authorites say in the registry. The DVLA states year of manufacture, they don´t care for modelyear.
If two identical cars are are of early 1971 model production, maybe produced in november 1970, one might be registered in december 1970 and the other one in january 1971. They will get different years of manufacture in the registry since it seems that the cars get the same year of manufacture as the month they happen to enter the registry.
However the letters used on british licenseplates seems to be designed to match the modelyears, in most cases, the change of letter comes just in time for the next modelyear. In the above example both would carry licenseplates with a J at the end.

The swedish registry always used Modelyear, up til late nineties. I´m not sure of exactly when they stopped but I think it was about 1998. Now they only note when a vehicle is produced, and that always correspond to the month when the vehicle enters the registry. So if the importer, say Toyota, applied for registration on january the third 2006 the car will be considered produced in january 2006. That would have been an increadibly fast chain of delivery from the plant in Japan to Sweden. The authorites makes it easy for themseleves, and mostly they´re fairly correct.

So either way to go leads us into trouble here and there and I don´t think it´s fair to have to make a choice between the two mainlines. Both are equally true and interesting, but they do lead into confusion and conflict with each other. So I suggest that we add another field for the years, and maybe even months, of production.

One obvious benefit is of course that we don´t have to argue about years, both ways of looking at it will be satisfied.

Another benefit is that we can roughly give an age to unidentified vehicles and group them from that. It´s fairly easy to see if it´s built between 1925-1935 or 1985-1995 for instance. This should probably simplify identification somewhat, since we all have different interests and knowledges. If we could sort out the years we mainly knows well it´s easier to get through the pages of unidentified vehicles.

Furthermore I suggest that the yearfields are added to the searchfunction, this would also simplify both identification and the search for what´s interesting. If I have a picture of 1966 Plymouth but I´m not sure of the exact model, I could just search Imcdb for 1966 Plymouths and probably have the answer quickly instead of searching through all Plymouths or guessing on modelnames and risking of not finding it. Someone else might just adore the 1955-57 Chevrolets, and like to see them all regardless of model.

Another thought regarding the unidentified vehicles that could make searching easier, especially for old vehicles, is to have the opportunity of searching the database not just for Make and Year but maybe just for, let´s say italian vehicles between 1920-1930. It´s often I see a picture of an old car and maybe don´t know what it is but the style of it gives it away as a german or italian car maybe.
This kind of search would give a wide selection of possible candidates, maybe not the answer but possibly a direction to follow.
Most facts are already in the database with the years and the makes are connected with countries in many cases. I think the site would benefit from broadened searh possibilities.

I don´t know about programming but I hope it´s not too much work to make these changes for Antoine.
That is of course if you guys think my suggestions make any sense at all.

What do you say?

I do not think that months of production would be useful. It can be posted in the comments, but I do not see in what it will be useful if included in the vehicle fields.



On the other hand, this is more useful. A second year field for having a range, in a similar way to what was done for the series, could be nice.
What do the other members think of this?



I think that it is somewhere in my huge to-do list



Currently there is a way to display cars from a country, but it is accessible from the stats page rather than the search page. I should add that to the search page and allow to combine search criterias.

I'd be in favor for the range of years, but not in favor of a separate field for model year and introduction year because most people look at the model year. If you were to mention that you have a 1985 Ford Taurus, Taurus fanatics will be quick to correct you because it was sold as a 1986 model. I'm pretty sure there's a fan club for virtually every car so that would be thousands of emails or comments about "Oh, the Hyundai Excel (or some other car) was introduced in ... , but for the ... model year so it should be (model year)."

Before I started adding comments on this site, I also thought that the use of modelyear was a matter of course. But it isn´t as evident to all as it is to americans or swedes. Looking at the comments about years for the cars here, a large percentage of the non american cars gets comments that are one year ahead of the possible modelyear. I guess there are several reasons for that, nevertheless it´s a fact that we have different ways of looking at it.

So, just adding one more field to the years wouldn´t help much. It´s necessary to have the range of production years by themselves, first production year almost always correspond the year of introduction. And keep the current yearfield separate, but rename it to Modelyear so it´s no doubt what´s what.

This way an exact modelyear can be defined, if possible, within the range. And for those who prefer year of introduction it´ll be there too.

When you find the time Antoine, it´s an impressive amount of work you put down here!

Well, as promised, my opinion:

I think it's better quoting SIxcyl, 'cause he speaks english better than me! And as I have the same opinion...

generally year of intro:
I need the oldest first production-Year (December/59 = 1959) I love old cars

exception Modelyear:
US-Cars with 1-year production (1952 Chevrolet Styleline or somethings)
Facelift model with "Modelyear" dating from Manufacturer or today's classification from Carclubs