In my #blog
Happy 18th to #Autocade

jackyan.com/blog/2026/03/happy-18th-... #publishing #car #book #website #anniversary #history #reference #encyclopædia

Traffic on Autocade over two seconds, 100 hits. (This is just a selection.)

Some concerning traffic patterns here on #Autocade. Not a single IP address but a lot of traffic—yet the user agents all suggest they are using Mozilla on Mac. Likely to be a coordinated bot net scraping or attacking?

Sampled logs from Cloudflare showing traffic to Autocade, where only 2 of 25 entries have been allowed through while the rest are challenged or blocked.

Chosen because this is typical, not because I want to prove something. These are the sampled logs of traffic to #Autocade. On any given page, we have two legitimate entries, and the rest are illegitimate bots (“#AI” scrapers and hackers).

Original post on mastodon.social

#WordWeavers 25.12.30 How has your writing been this year? Any achievements/wins/lessons you want to celebrate?

Wrote fewer features and books compared with 2024, but I did finish the new #Autocade Year of Cars annual a few weeks earlier. So the Christmas lead-up was less stressful. Like so […]

Original post on mastodon.social

The price of having ethics. I could probably get the email addresses of everyone who ordered #Autocade annuals in previous years and inform them that the latest is out. However, only a handful registered as users; most people shopped without signing up. If we were some awful US tech firm, that […]

Original post on mastodon.social

We’ve been working on something and one feedback (meant to be negative) was that the original #Autocade site looked like Wikipedia. Well, it is run off Mediawiki. However, when I started it, the feedback was that it didn’t look enough like Wikipedia! (The original plan was for it to be a wiki […]

Anthropic's ClaudeBot with the IP 216.73.216.127 hit Autocade 4,560 times today.

#Anthropic really tried to hit #Autocade today … but we had pre-blocked the buggers. #ClaudeBot

Original post on mastodon.social

Doing open web is hard. #Autocade actually began as a wiki. Basically it was hit by spammers constantly, setting up fake accounts and adding their crap. I spent a lot of time deleting and monitoring. Of the 5,500-plus entries, one was sent to me by a nice person in India, 30 or so were written […]

Very kind of Lindsay Shelton and the #Scoop crew to run our #Autocade release today.

www.scoop.co.nz/stories/BU2511/S00240/in...

How we chose this year’s Autocade Year of Cars cover We had compiled a press list this year for _Autocade Year of Cars_ —but I still wound up sending personal emails, some from my private address, some from a work one. What I didn’t do this year was give _Lucire_ first dibs on the news days early—we’ll run it there now that most of our colleagues have received it. A tiny group of customers signed up for our emails and I’ve just written to them personally, too. There’s a paywalled article on _Autocade World_ that shows some draft covers we did. The gist of it is that it was hard to make our choice of a Zeekr 007 GT shooting brake. While we are working to secure a photographer for another project (whose work may appear next year), we were more limited this time round. There were some fantastic Aston Martin shots but we already had the DB5 on the cover of the first yearbook. Avatr brought out a very pretty 06 model during 2025, but we already had an Avatr on the cover last year. As we covered the Ferrari 849 Testarossa, that was a contender but the factory photos weren’t cover-quality. The Bugatti Tourbillon: maybe, but I noticed there was one on the cover of _Toutes les voitures du monde_ (among others) and didn’t _L’Année automobile_ have a Bugatti recently? We didn’t want to copy. (This is also why I didn’t buy a certain issue of _The Road Rat_ last year as they had done a Marcello Gandini story, and while I would have loved to have read it, I also wanted us to do ours in our own way.) Then you have issues of quality, rights, etc., and before long the Zeekr 007 GT is looking like one of the few contenders. Last year’s was also tricky due to photo quality but we did make the right choice, finding a luxury Chinese EV brand to represent the year. Given the number of new releases in China each year, maybe they do have the odds stacked in their favour, though the BMW iX3 was a possibility, too. But I thought otherwise as I’m sure the last thing you want to see on a book that might be a gift for someone is another SUV. It’s always best to go with something unfamiliar—that was my thinking last year—as this forces you do a double-take. The 007 GT might not be the freshest, considering the saloon came out in 2023 (and appeared in our first number), but to most eyes it’s unusual enough, and even the Chinese domestic market will still be getting used to the sight of a lifestyle estate. I trust we made the right choice. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. Order yours here. **You may also like** * Out now: _Autocade Year of Cars 2026_ * _Autocade Year of Cars 2025_ : the covers that could have been * _Autocade_ gets a new logotype; and we block a lot of “AI” bots * _Autocade Year of Cars 2025_ now out * _Autocade_ hits the 5,000-model landmark * Happy birthday: _Autocade_ turns 10 * _Autocade_ reaches 22 million, while Rachel Hunter appears in _Lucire_ * Baidu’s “AI” image enhancement tested: clever, but like a hallucination

In my #blog
How we chose this year’s #Autocade Year of Cars cover

jackyan.com/blog/2025/11/how-we-chos... #car #publishing #book #waka #pukapuka #photography #WeirdCarMastodon #Zeekr #Geely

Cover of Autocade Year of Cars 2026, with the Zeekr 007 GT estate (a Chinese EV) and two models pretending to do “leisurely” activity.

And here it is, my third #Autocade Year of Cars annual for all you #car aficionados out there! Octane called last year’s ‘brilliant’ and ‘totally absorbing’ and I hope this 2026 edition hits the same high notes! Boosts appreciated! […]

[Original post on mastodon.social]

The Bugatti Tourbillion parked outside the Fairmont Peace Hotel in Shanghai.

A perfect gift for car lovers: #Autocade Year of Cars 2026 is out now

lucire.com/insider/20251117/a-perfe... #book #WeirdCarMastodon #livre #car #voiture #coche #bil #macchina #living #bok #bookstodon

Front of BMW M4 CS Edition against a green background.

In my #blog
Out now: #Autocade Year of Cars 2026

jackyan.com/blog/2025/11/out-now-aut... #book #AutocadeYearOfCars #publishing

I might not get as much up (as it's just me these days) and I am biased, but I think #Autocade is better for its specialist area. And Wikipedia cites us, not the other way round.

https://vmst.io/@drukac/115447894333934470

Changed the favicon for #Autocade to match the new logo (first new logo since 2008) and I am so not used to it, even though I created both!

#Autocade traffic is down to more sensible levels. Looks like weʼve successfully blocked almost all of the #theftbots from Google users, Tencent, Alibaba, OpenAI, ByteDance, Meta, Semrush, and others. #bots #GrandTheftAutocorrect

Autocade logotype in lowercase and orange lettering.

In my #blog
#Autocade gets a new logotype; and we block a lot of “#AI” #bots

jackyan.com/blog/2025/09/autocade-ge... #publishing #redesign #branding

Are there Brazilian “AI” scrapers? Weʼre getting a lot of traffic from #Brazil for #Autocade, and they are from all manner of ISPs, with nothing connecting them other than the country of origin. Unless we are simply more popular in Brazil now, which is a good thing.

Cloudflare's WAF rules block a request from Blexbot. The query string (title=Special:Log&page=Ranger+B) is unusual.

Cloudflare's WAF rules block a request from Blexbot. The query string (title=Special:Log&page=Rover+45) is unusual.

I think I was right to block #Blexbot. These cannot be strings that one would arrive at through just regular surfing on #Autocade.

Autocade’s top 20 leaderboard, three years since the reset Interesting to see the _Autocade_ leaderboard as it was in 2022, as there are some differences today: The first image in the 2022 post was before the site was shifted to a new server. The second was from a couple of months later. There is some jostling around but at this rate, the Daewoo Winstorm is our next featured ‘from the encyclopædia’ car to be profiled in _Year of Cars_. The general public wants to read about everyday cars more than exotica, with snapshots over three years confirming this. **You may also like** * _Autocade_ reaches 39 million page views * It took a little longer, but _Autocade_ reaches 12 million views * _Autocade Year of Cars 2025_ now out * Happy birthday: _Autocade_ turns 10 * _Autocade_ reaches 34 million page views * _Lucire_ receives second honour from _Luxlife_ ; _Autocade_ reaches 41 million page views * Healthy jumps * _Autocade_ reaches 35 million page views, the latest million in 41 days

In my #blog
Autocade’s top 20 leaderboard, three years since the reset

jackyan.com/blog/2025/07/autocades-t... #Autocade

We donʼt update #Autocade that much but it looks like we hit close to 300,000 unique visitors over the last month. And this is with us blocking bots and scrapers.

I keep getting people asking me about #Autocade magazine but there is no such thing. I thought calling it Autocade Year of Cars or the Autocade yearbook might have been a clue that it’s not a magazine?

Autocade at 42 million, kicked off Weibo, and random links The anorak posts about _Autocade_ milestones now appear on _Autocade World_ , and we hit 42 million page views earlier this week. In other news, a pro-China political post saw my Weibo suspended ‘temporarily’, no sign on when this will be lifted. Hence the Weibo logo disappearing from the footer of this blog. It is a reminder that the safest space for your own work is your own site, not something at the whim of censors or crappy tech. I’ve now been kicked off Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Weibo. The western sites were all down to bugs but China, of course, has limited free speech (much like being on whatever Twitter is called now). You’re on their turf, you play by their rules. And at least their rules are more consistent and less hypocritical than Musk’s. It’s just a shame that even something that, to most people (oriental or occidental), would be humorous ticks off Chinese censors. Having been kicked off the American sites at different times in the 2010s meant that I’m not terribly fussed, especially when this blog is more my personal expression than any pithy things I might microblog. Interesting links: the Australian Broadcasting Corp. on the Atlas Network and their tentacles in Australian and New Zealand politics; a teenager creates a Braille reader that can be had for under US$50 (rather than the US$20,000 they currently cost); and Carole Cadwalladr’s latest TED talk, below. Like I said, a lot of what I posted over the years is now mainstream thought—though _still_ not enough people are waking up. That’s why we need principled people like Cadwalladr, who I understand is between jobs since the Scott Trust (_The Guardian_) sold _The Observer_. **You may also like** * If you want a slice of the pie, then compete * Twitter pushes the near future to look more bipolar than multipolar * License from us, not from US * If you’re in the ‘New Zealand can’t’ camp, then you’re not a business leader * Secret “Asian” man (with apologies to Tak Toyoshima) * How will Chevrolet go down in Korea? * Most of HR isn’t about finding the right candidate * A year of random thoughts: 2014 in review

In my blog
#Autocade at 42 million, kicked off #Weibo, and random links

jackyan.com/blog/2025/04/autocade-at...

Autocade (@autocade@weird.autos) 2 Posts, 7 Following, 2 Followers · For the joy of cars. From the creators of the car reference at autocade.net and the Autocade Year on Cars yearbook.

For the #car community, #Autocade now has its own Mastodon account over at @autocade! See you there for car stuff! #Auto #voiture #coche #carro #waka #macchina

Autocade (@autocade@weird.autos) 2 Posts, 7 Following, 2 Followers · For the joy of cars. From the creators of the car reference at autocade.net and the Autocade Year on Cars yearbook.

Hi everyone, I made an account for #Autocade at @autocade (seems to be a very appropriate place for it!). #car #cars #coche #Auto #voiture #carro #macchina #waka

2020 Ford Fusion Titanium Hybrid in metallic copper.

In #Autocade World: #tariffs won’t make the Big Two great again

autocade.world/2025/04/tariffs-wont-mak... #car #GM #Ford #history #marketing

Only 8,000 page views on #Autocade yesterday, but at least we are keeping the scrapers out.

Why is #Toyota so opaque about the kWh rating on the batteries in the Crown? (They cite Ah, and make it very hard for you to find the voltage so that you can’t readily do the maths.) We have so far managed to figure out the kWh numbers for the Sport and the Crossover. #Autocade

Roewe’s all up Roewe Clever Roewe Longmao With the addition of the unremarkable Roewe Clever microcar, we now have all the Roewes up—hopefully we’ve covered both past and present models of this brand, which owner SAIC once saw as the successor to Rover, had it managed to secure the Viking longship badge and the Rover trade mark. While well known outside China because of its ownership of MG, inside the Middle Kingdom SAIC is less successful than the likes of Geely or Changan when it comes to its own brands. With an eye on foreign markets, it has models that aren’t sold in China, and at least one was recently added to the encyclopædia: the Longmao (Lomemo or Totoro for export; the former is a contraction of _love me more_). We’re right up to date (for now) with Roewe, including the newly launched D6 saloon (in the header image); not as elegant as what we see from Rising, but China does have its share of slightly awkward electric saloons that do well on the domestic market (the Deepal SL03 comes to mind: not as pretty as the Mazda EZ-6 which shares its base, but it does better than the Japanese rebody at home). Please do let us know if we’re missing anything. We’ve also included the Infiniti QX60s and the preceding JX35 on the site now. ### Related articles ## Innocenti’s ADO16s ## Haval’s current line-up on Autocade ## Sing-along-a-Maz’

On #Autocade: all the #Roewe and #Haval models are up (we think).

https://autocade.world/2025/03/roewes-all-up/
https://autocade.world/2025/03/haval-on-autocade/

#China #car #waka #Auto #voiture #coche #macchina #SAIC #Changcheng #哈弗 #荣威

The beauty of not having something I’ve told the story about not having Noelene Morris’s _The Lettering Book_ as a child, because I knew the NZ$5 was outside my parents’ budget. Ultimately was a good thing and it led me to remember and create typeface designs, later becoming the first digital font designer in New Zealand. Another item came to mind over the weekend when Amanda and I went to a used bookshop in Upper Hutt. There were old copies, one each, of _Automobile Year_ and _World Cars_. As a boy, these were out of reach, too. In 1982, the latter retailed for NZ$80. Even with my parents’ improving financial situation, that was far too much to ask. But I remember flicking through it and, like _Auto Katalog_ , which at that time I did have a hand-me-down copy of, it was sensibly arranged, cars referred to by their names in their countries of origin. _Automobile Year_ I saw occasionally, once every few years, and had an impression of what was inside. The _Automobile Year_ was from 2002 and _World Cars_ from 1981. Even though I could afford them now, I didn’t buy them. Simple reason: for my interests, _Autocade Year of Cars_ is better. I know I am comparing apples and oranges here given that publishing technology has come a long way. _Automobile Year_ was heavily geared toward motorsport, which is fair enough: it’s always had a mix of new cars and sport. Motorsport is not an area that I feel I can write about authoritatively, and I know what I enjoy. _World Cars_ , of course, beats anything hard copy book I’ve produced in terms of comprehensiveness, but I already know the concept, and our presentation is superior. There was nothing to gain from my buying it, especially as I have sufficient resources from 1981. I’m sure _L’année automobile_ today is a superb production, and part of me wouldn’t mind ordering the latest to find out, but I feel quite happy developing _Autocade_ in its own way. I’m not trying to replicate them, I’m carving my own niche with the help of my customers who choose to send me feedback. I know what _Autocade_ ’s strengths have been over the last 17 years, and what the brand stands for. I was propelled by my memories of both books as I saw them as a child, and it’s been OK to not have seen either titles readily available in this part of the world over the last few decades. The memories of those books are far more colourful, indeed more aspirational—what I’m trying to re-create is that sensation, which, sadly, the reality no longer lives up to. The ones I do have are _Auto Universum_ , an old _Wheels Yearbook_ , dozens of _Auto Katalog_ and _Toutes les voitures du monde_ , and hundreds of periodicals. They are influential, but there’s not enough in them for them to colour my thoughts on what _Year of Cars_ should have. What I want to create was so accurately put by _Octane_ in their review of _Autocade Year of Cars 2025_ in their March issue: ‘Very professionally produced, good value and totally absorbing.’ I hope to deliver this again soon. **You may also like** * You never know where your interests will take you * Finishing off 2011 with the most fun radio interview I have ever done * Neil Gaiman on JY Integrity on his UK paperbacks * A three-decade time capsule hanging on my door * The expectation of invisibility * When not having something drives creativity * John Shaft beats Luke Skywalker hands down * _Autocade Year of Cars 2025_ now out

In my blog
The beauty of not having something

jackyan.com/blog/2025/02/the-beauty-... #Autocade #book #publishing #inspiration