What you see on a model page
Each model page shows, engine by engine: fuel type, power, torque, gearbox, drivetrain, kerbweight, gross vehicle weight (GVW, equivalent of French F.2), gross train weight (GTW, equivalent of F.3), payload, braked towing weight, unbraked towing weight and the computed towing capacity. All fields come from identifiable external sources. None is entered by guess. When a value is not published by the manufacturer for a given version, the field stays blank (« n/a ») rather than guessed or interpolated. This is the first rule of the site, more important than catalogue coverage.
How towing capacity is computed
The displayed towing capacity is the minimum between:
- the braked towing weight announced by the manufacturer for that engine, and
- the difference gross train weight minus gross vehicle weight.
If only one of the two is available, that one is kept. If neither is available, the cell stays blank. The computation is rewritten on every ingestion (never typed by hand), which avoids transcription errors and stays consistent with the legal definition. The computation lives in the public helper computePoidsTractable().
Allowed sources
Four kinds of sources are used, in order of priority.
- Official manufacturer spec sheets. PDF brochures and tech sheets published by manufacturers on their press site or consumer site. Concrete examples: press.bmwgroup.com, media.renault.com, media.stellantis.com, press rooms of Hyundai, Kia, Skoda, Toyota, Ford, Volkswagen. These are the finest sources: they give braked towing weights per engine and gearbox, sometimes official GTW figures.
- ADEME — Car Labelling. French open and official dataset: model nomenclature, engines, kerbweights, GVW. Used as a base layer to cross-check manufacturer sheets and decide which engines to list. Open licence (Etalab).
- European Environment Agency (EEA). Pan-European CO2 monitoring dataset, public, useful for models sold across several European countries. Same nature of data as ADEME, EU scope.
- Wikidata. For model name aliases, generations (body codes such as G01, F39, U06) and production years. Never for weight or towing figures.
Sources I do not use
Classified-ads sites and aggregator car magazines are excluded, even when their figures happen to be correct. Reasons: those databases are protected by sui generis rights (French Intellectual Property Code, article L. 341-1), they themselves aggregate without always citing, and their engine-by-engine accuracy is uneven. Explicitly excluded: La Centrale, Largus, Caradisiac, AutoPlus, Motor Legend, and any site whose data is not redistributable.
Also excluded: forums (unverifiable user testimonies), dealer product pages (which copy without cross-checking), and homemade extrapolation (« that engine looks like the other one, so same GTW ») even when it sounds reasonable.
Traceability
Each ingestion logs the source in the database (URL of the PDF or dataset, date of the read). Any published figure can therefore be traced back to its origin. A value for which no reliable source was found stays data_complete = 0 in the database and is not promoted (the page shows « n/a » instead of a number).
Updates
Pages are enriched in batches of several engines, several times a week, from manufacturer PDFs. Each batch is a versioned database migration deployed automatically, so the trace of every change is public on the site repository. If you spot a figure that looks wrong, flag it via the contact page with the model, engine and the official source that made you doubt; I recheck and fix.
Acknowledged limits
A few limits to know before basing an irreversible decision on the site's figures.
- The figures here do not replace your V5C logbook. The same model can have different GVW/GTW depending on options, production date or exact model year. For your car, only the V5C (or your local equivalent) is authoritative.
- Scope is European. The database is calibrated for the European market, in kilograms. lb conversions on the EN side are rounded. Vehicles sold only outside Europe (US versions, UK imports outside homologation) are not covered.
- Sourcing takes time. A model only shows up here once its figures are sourced on an official PDF. Coverage grows in batches, not by a massive dump. That is on purpose.
To report an error or suggest a model
Direct contact is at vaucher.jeremy@gmail.com or via the contact page. Mention the exact model (brand, trim, year), the value that looks wrong and ideally the official source you checked. Corrections come before additions.
Page last updated 18 Jun 2026 · Written by Jérémy Vaucher