So kind of a big update today.

I have added the FULL build of every single car in the database. This is information I have been holding onto for awhile and just didn't know how best to present it. Well for whatever reason today I just thought "Eff it, I'll just barf it all out across the spreadsheet and clean it up later"

And that is largely what I have done.

I left some of the basic summarized specs like color, Major Leather options, brakes etc... in the first few columns, then notes. Then literally every single option after that.

Doing this also broke some of the graphs, but I intend to revamp those anyway.

So there ya have it. Crunch away! now you guys know everything I know about what options have been ordered.

 

Dude, amazing work! Can I claim 767 as mine?

 

Sure can. Just to confirm your car is Sapphire Blue, LWB, Red Stitch with platinum wheels?

 

Yep, need my full vin?

 

Nope. Already got it!

 

Might I ask how you get the VIN & details? I see mine in there (I think), and am curious. Forgive if this isn't the first time you've answered this.

 

I have answered before, but I am sure it is buried deep within this thread. Not to mention I keep changing how I do it.

The first thing that makes it possible is to understand the VIN's are sequential. That seems simple enough, but due to check digit, and the fact that Porsche skipped the sequence at one point it was a little more complicated than you might expect.

Up until just recently I had been using an online calculator to provide me the the checksum digit. The crappy part about that was I had to enter each VIN one by one into the tool and then get the correct VIN, with the correct checksum, and then check that against the Porsche database. I had been entering about 20 at a time that way and then just "discovering" more as needed.

However recently I stumbled upon the math to calculate the checksum, and it was a piece of cake. So I wrote an Excel formula and calculated every VIN from here out to 191999. so that part is all done!

The second part of the equation is there is an online tool, intended for use by dealers in the US and Canada that will return the full build of each car if you enter the VIN.

BigKraig wrote a little tool that will crawl that database if you provide it with a list of VIN's and so he is actually responsible for the initial huge data ingest that created the database.

However now that I am up to date with production, I just check for new ones manually and then enter them one by one when I find them.

yeah so that is how I do it. and boy let me tell you is it fun! lol. Well it was a lot of fun when I was waiting for my GT4. Now I pretty much do it because I want to see it completed, and I know the new people ordering their cars are just as interested in seeing the data as I was.

 

W...H...O...A! That sounds like a lot of work. Cheers to you.

 

gmaki, a big thanks to you for this labor love (hopefully) love. I'm sure everyone is grateful to you for this endeavor. I can't wait to see mine on the DB!

 

excellent job on the data analysis - i ordered my GT4 3 weeks ago - its an April Build with a June Delivery - Are you planning to update the spreadsheet every month ?

 

Thank you so much for creating this and keeping it going gmaki.

I always remember the kick I got when I found my build in your database based on color and MSRP before the dealer had sent me any info.

 

^^^^ Oops, should be "labor of love."

 

Thanks and yeah it is still fun. Not to mention I am keeping my Excel and now Google sheets chops up to speed. I get to do so little difficult work anymore in Excel that I actively seek out little challenges like this. I have put to use what I have learned here at work already a couple of different times.

It is not quite perfect yet but I added a bit of a fun look at the data on the "Options" tab. So if you have any interest in this kind of stuff go ahead and take a look. What I have done is started to track the split of certain options over time. I used the VIN sequence in roughly lots of 100 to denote "time" since build months were too inconsistent with the totals.

An example of an interesting little tidbit is that over the last 400 or so builds, Sapphire Blue Metallic has actually been the most popular color while White has dropped to #2. I did have a sense of that but it is interesting to see it proven out. My theory is that SBM looks so good in the flesh as soon as people started seeing them delivered it skewed the orders going forward.

 

This is outstanding work and coming from a background with some of the limited production air-cooled cars I see it as even far more useful as we go thru the years. We will have a "complete" database of the numbers built and their configurations. No longer will there be competing claims and uncertainties. In other words, it's your duty to keep this up and scratch known losses off the list as the years go by.... Lucky guy :-)

 

haha, lucky me. Well that is kind of the beauty of putting it up on Google docs. As long as Google is in biz and their servers continue to run it should live on.