You jest, but years ago I worked for one of the largest auto parts places. You have no idea how many times you'd input year, make, model, and trim, just to be presented with multiple choice questions. Nobody knew how big their drums were, in inches, or the number of blades on their fan, the length of their belts, etc. Apparently a lot of mixing and matching happens. Some folks legitimately had to give us a prior year for us to find the right part.
If you've ever been to a tesla service center, it's kind of interesting.
Cars glide in silently and when they sit there for a bit the words "Service Mode" come up in maybe 5" high letters on the dashboard.
There are lots of technicians on their computers. The car info comes up on the specific car and shows lots of history, where and when it was last serviced and so forth.
Each car seems to have it's own personal list of options and features, that shows up on the website when searching for cars, or when signing into you car portal.
I think all cars are like this, but telsa is less rigid / concerned about model years and just consults the database for the specific car's info at every step.
The dealerships use VIN numbers, which end up getting you the exact part you want, even if the same car model of the same year has different parts. I suppose some of the retailers don't have this privilege.
I disagree with putting this one into the same category. The "personal" in "PC" means "used by a single person; not shared" which is quite different from the meaning of "not belonging to an employer".
Yep. Just went thru that 2 days ago with my father's GMC W series truck. The air filter I got from the retailer is for the previous generation, even though that's what their system says for the truck.
I had to hand the old filter to the store staff and have him copy the FRAM part number.
For the most essential part of a normal gas engine - motor oil - my local parts center outright asked to see my engine to confirm the oil spec printed on it, even though every car for a decade in my product line had the same oil. Not because they expected to be wrong, but because they could not risk being wrong. I can only imagine what they’ve seen that makes them so wary.
Whenever I go to the dealership to get an original part (typically if there's several slightly different variants available and I don't know which I need), they just input my license plate number into their system, then click through a menu to find the part (like chassis->steering->link arm->left side). Takes about 30 seconds, they show me a picture to confirm it's right, then they go grab my part from the warehouse. (This is a European manufacturer.)