Fixing the FIA's Horrible Archive

If you like old racecars, you've probably attempted to use this shambling excuse of a website known as the FIA's historic database. Either for a specific purpose, or just to browse out of curiosity. If you know what you're looking for, the site's perfectly serviceable. If you're looking for seredipity, suffer.

If you've never heard of the site before, check it out. Scroll through the collection of cars and realise the issue. That delay every time you press 'Load More' is a killer across 340 pages. So I decided to scrape the site to collect a link to all 3396 cars, which you can view here. Even without the motorsport connection, just having a hugely detailed list of car specifications is quite useful.

I have little to no expertise here. I vibecoded (cringe) via ChatGPT a console command which ripped and formatted all the cars into a json file, which Eleventy, my static site generator of choice, happily accepts and formats into my site no issue. The FIA's site is so slow that even an automated solution took over half an hour to get through every page. But now the suffering is largely over. I hope other people find this as useful as I do.

Is there anything interesting in here?

Well there's...

• The never submitted and incomplete homologation form of the McLaren M6GT.
• A whole contingent of Eastern European cars that I'm amazed ever went through the bother of an FIA Homologation. Like this Murat 124, what I assume is a Turkish license of the Fiat 124. I'll let you fall across the others.
• Two different kinds of Opel Zafiras are listed, isn't that strange? The reason is less fascinating than the secret homologated successor to the 806 Super Tourer I was hoping for. German F3 was an open engine formula of sorts, and these are the homologation for Opel's supply.
• A turbodiesel Alfa Romeo Alfetta.
• A weird amount of Hyundais. Some of these aren't a surprise, given their early '00's rally effort. But I'm unsure if the 1980 Pony ever had a moment in competition that wasn't ironic on some level.

I'm hardly being exhaustive here. Happy hunting!