How I was banned from Carsales

I was banned from car sales for scraping millions of records from my PC. Every time I visit car sales they think that I’m a bot. Which is very disapointing. Because I passed every one of their captchas and they still blocked me, it’s ruthless!

I wrote a simple program to go through every one of their car listings and get information store the information. I did this between December 2022 and September 2023. Where they fully blocked me.

I was trying to build up a dataset so I could analyse car price trends. But not getting a full year of data, along with other countermeasures they put in place hampered my enthusiasm. I think that even after such a long time it’s worthwhile to share some of the interesting results I found.

Analysis

This data is from a snapshot of the cars for sale in Australia in February 2023. While this data is incomplete and not current I think that it’s quite representative of the Australian car market. I think that you can draw some very interesting insights from this data.

Covid

Covid had a massive impact on the delivery of cars into Australia and cars being manufactured in general which is evident from the massive drop in 2020 cars for sale.

Super Cars

The number of super cars for sale over the time seems quite random. This is likely due to their more limited supply.

Ferrari having the highest average value amongst the super car manufacturers is unsurprising. But how close the average values of Lamborghiini and McLaren are is.

The popularity of the 911 is completely unmatched.

It’s interesting that there is a sharp drop in super cars post GFC, even in Australia which was relatively unaffected.

Ferrari is always a consistent presence in the super car market.

Body Style

2010 saw the SUV become the most popular type of car in Australia.

Hatchbacks are cheap, coupes are expensive.

SUV and utes dominate the Australian car landscape.

Australians should buy more wagons!

Crossovers have killed the sedan.

Turbo Cars

Around 2010 turbo chargers overtook NA cars.

The average value of turbo cars is significantly higher, likely due to them being newer.

More than 60% of cars for sale are turbo chared which is more than I expected.

There are still NA cars being made. Emissions regulations and increased power demands are killing the NA engine.

It will be rare to have a naturally aspirated car in the future.

Japanese Cars

Mazda, super popular, probably due to the BT-50.

I didn’t expect that Isuzu’s average price to be inline with Toyota.

The first sign of Toyota’s strangle hold on the Australian car market.

Covid was indiscriminate in affecting car manufacturing. Toyota seemingly did better than the rest.

Honda is not popular in Australia. They should make a ute.

German Cars

The popularity of German makes seems quite stable. With Mercedes crushing it in the mid to late 2010s.

Mercedes are considerable more valuable on average than Audi or BMW, which are very close in average value. With all three makes producing very similar selection this is quite surprising.

Mercedes > BMW > Audi seems to be the story in Australia.

Audi seems to winning some market share recently.

Manual Cars

It’s interesting to see that auto cars overtook manual cars around 2000.

Manual cars, while being considered enthusiast by some are less valuable on average.

Electric cars are only a very small proportion of the cars on our roads.

New manual cars are still being sold.

It’s not surprising that being able to drive a manual is less and less common in Australia with the proliferation of autos.

Electric Cars

The range of electric cars seems to be increasing over time.

The more range the electric car has the seemingly more valuable it is, not very surprising.

Really short range electric cars are not popular at all.

There are very few electric cars with over 700 kms of range.

Cylinder Configuration

4 cylinders are the popular choice.

More cylinders = more expensive.

V10s are very rare.

3 cylinders are pretty new, GR yaris!

New cars are almost all 4 cylinder.

Engine Size

Very similar strong values for large engines across the board.

Big engines are dwindling…

Fuel Type

Eletric cars are very expensive.

Hybrids are pretty uncommon.

Odometer

Quite an interesting pattern. Seems people’s driving is normally distributed.

I suspect some of the super cars are padding the 5-20K kms segment.

Not the order I would have expected.

Price Segments

Older cars are cheaper.

Expensive cars are really expensive!

Car Sales doesn’t really cater to cheap cars.