Autotrader

[Gress]

Was looking through autotrader and it seems they've updated their acceleration search feature as the numbers have changed (Previous first bracket used to be 0-5, now it's 0-4). The cars I was previously looking at are basically now all filtered out, as I'm guessing they were in the 4-5s range, which is a bummer.


For whatever reason autotrader doesn't even seem to be adhering to it's own rules though. When searching in the 0-4s range, this car came up:
https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202312074...
When you look at the performance specifications, it's listed at 6.1s 0-62 time, no where near the 4s cutoff.


I know that the seller states that it's mapped, but how is autotrader just guessing it's acceleration figures now? Getting kinda annoyed with autotrader more and more, especially with the huge costs to advertise. Any alternatives there that gives accurate specs on cars with their prices these days?

[Krikkit]

Gress said:

I know that the seller states that it's mapped, but how is autotrader just guessing it's acceleration figures now? Getting kinda annoyed with autotrader more and more, especially with the huge costs to advertise. Any alternatives there that gives accurate specs on cars with their prices these days?

There are always errors in the data, it's nothing new.

Why do you need such accurate specs? Does it really matter if it's 3.9s or 4.1s 0-60?

[sixor8]

I've occasionally done searches by mileage, emissions, and acceleration too.

But the data they get is often way out. Loads of X6 3.0d appear with 0-60 below 5s. Really? Even the 50d model doesn't manage that! And sellers often massage stuff like incorrect VED data too.

[Gress]

Krikkit said:

There are always errors in the data, it's nothing new.

Why do you need such accurate specs? Does it really matter if it's 3.9s or 4.1s 0-60?

Kinda wish it was more granular, since anything that is 4.0s is now lumped in with the 6.0s, a 50% increase in relative terms.
The main issue is that the car linked is stating 6.1s, but is in the 0s-4s category, so now I have no idea which stat i'm supposed to believe lol

[Gress]

sixor8 said:

I've occasionally done searches by mileage, emissions, and acceleration too.

But the data they get is often way out. Loads of X6 3.0d appear with 0-60 below 5s. Really? Even the 50d model doesn't manage that! And sellers often massage stuff like incorrect VED data too.

Yeahhh, I was seeing the exact same thing, so many X6's and something similar too I think it was the older cayennes.
A quick google states mostly 7-8s depending on source, year and model.
I guess i'll just have to be pretty careful and check on lots of other sites than soley relying on autotrader for this info. Bit of a bummer really, the 0-60 time seemed like a nice way of filtering out the slow from the fast (At least in a straight line).

[Dave.]

Some/most of the options should be multiple choice. It’s pretty dumb as it is, has been for a while.

[macron]

Holy revival etc.

They have all the data, but good god they can fk off with it.

I want to sit in a specific car, so I enter my postcode and +20 miles. 85% of cars are not in 20 miles, they're any old random ste garage that will do delivery - and not even free. Yes carshop, cinch, all the glitzy grifters, but random mom and pop rancid garages too.

Honestly, what a load of junk..

I know they have not even Bob Hope, but it would be good to see Cazoo coming through and actually offering a decent alternative, that this is the biggest advertising site in the UK and it's this ste is embarrassing.

[mjf1]

macron said:

Holy revival etc.

They have all the data, but good god they can fk off with it.

I want to sit in a specific car, so I enter my postcode and +20 miles. 85% of cars are not in 20 miles, they're any old random ste garage that will do delivery - and not even free. Yes carshop, cinch, all the glitzy grifters, but random mom and pop rancid garages too.

Honestly, what a load of junk..

I know they have not even Bob Hope, but it would be good to see Cazoo coming through and actually offering a decent alternative, that this is the biggest advertising site in the UK and it's this ste is embarrassing.

As the leading car selling platform in the UK, their UI/UX team are pathetic. There are so many issues with the platform and of course the adverts are extremely annoying as well. I have spent a lot of time on it recently both on the website (desktop PC) & the mobile app and noticed some glaring issues.

1. Why can't they figure out that nobody wants to see a huge list of "features" like power steering - it's much more useful to know which EXTRA options a car may have, but have the regular stuff available too. They do kind of have this feature but it's very inconsistent.
2. It should be an account level setting to always exclude CATS/C/D/N cars as well, plus any other preference for searching.
3. Images are low quality and the gallery doesn't default to the view where you can skip through with arrows on your keyboard
4. You can't select multiple model variants! Manufacturers are guilty of too many trim levels, but it'd be nice to be able to select something like the folllwing all at once: M Sport, M Sport Plus Edition, M Sport Pro Edition & M Sport Shadow Edition. Or for an Audi I may want to see "S Line" and "Black Edition" together in one list
5. Annual tax should also show if the car is currently eligible for the extra tax when the car cost more than £40k new. I think it's for the first 5 years
6. Postcode should be set to my own, and not change because someone gave me a link containing search terms with their postcode
7. Performance (power) figures should be more granular. Specifically when looking at VW Golf GTIs, it's very annoying that I can only choose >200bhp or >250bhp. It makes it hard to find a performance pack GTI because the regular ones are 230bhp and the PP ones are 245bhp.
8. They should include a link to the gov.uk MOT history website for every car

One tip is that you can use - in the keyword box to exclude terms and remove some of the nonsense. So if you put "-cinch" in there, it'll remove most of those. You can do multiple exclusions, so I like to use something like:

-cinch -cazoo -carshop -evans

This makes it far more tolerable.

[CrippsCorner]

No.4 is definitely annoying, but I guess it's a small minority of people that would actually use it? Doesn't seem like it would be hard to implement though.

Another, similar annoyance is sometimes they allow multiple choice, like for fuel, but for instance they don't with 'doors' where I want to search for both 2 and 3 door cars, I need to search twice, separately. eBay is of course even more annoying, but they do let you do this!

[Mr Tidy]

I used to like their search facility, even though their miles were more like 2 or 3 miles each!

But every time they update it the result seems worse. Luckily I'm only browsing these days rather than seriously searching.

[m3xgx]

I think the Auto Trader distance is as the crow flies between the two points and not actual travel distance.

Excluding the random sponsored crap at the other end of the country that appears of course!

[LayZ]

Given they should have lots of resources for front end devs and UX people I agree it is crap.

Number one on my list would be to stop dealers putting stupid promotional images about their crap warranties or FINANCE AVAILABLE when it should be a picture of the car.

[romft123]

wish they would sort out the distance function in the search once and for all. Barry in Wales for instance is 18 miles from Minehead......BY FECKIN BOAT.

[Truckosaurus]

romft123 said:

wish they would sort out the distance function in the search once and for all. Barry in Wales for instance is 18 miles from Minehead......BY FECKIN BOAT.

They need a 'draw the search area' feature like RightMove has.

[K4sper]

absolutely desperate for a feature whereby you can hide from the search cars that you have looked at and ruled out, rather than having to scroll through the same list all the time.

I guess commercially that's not in AT's interests as you would be ruling out the possibility of people changing their mind on something they have looked at before

[CrippsCorner]

romft123 said:

wish they would sort out the distance function in the search once and for all. Barry in Wales for instance is 18 miles from Minehead......BY FECKIN BOAT.

Ha, yes, this is very annoying in South Essex when half the results are in Kent

[Truckosaurus]

CrippsCorner said:

Ha, yes, this is very annoying in South Essex when half the results are in Kent

Or even here in the provinces out to the west of London, it doesn't take much to start including London based cars that would be a pain to get to visit (and/or undesirable), whereas you could expand your search 50+ miles down to the coast and be there within the hour.