A Bunch Of Autopian Readers Took On A Bonkers Project To Find Every Car With A Number For A Name From 1 To 2500

I’ve said many times before that I firmly believe that the Greater Autopian Car-munity is the single greatest, smartest, kindest, and, yes, sexiest automotive community of any kind on the whole entire internet, and I’ll back that up with my tangelo-sized fists if I have to. The combined brainpower of this community is significant as well, easily eclipsing the raw processing power of the several decades’ worth of 1970s and 1980s computers and game consoles I keep humming in my basement, bleeping and beeping and plotting schemes. As you may imagine, this raw automotive-focused brainpower can be directed to use for good, or for evil.

Or, perhaps more likely, for absolutely absurd goals, which is what usually happens and what I want to share with you today. Because our very own Autopian Reader Discord was recently host to an absolutely bonkers project, equally ambitious and inane, humbling in its scope and ambition. What was this project? I’ll tell you.

To count cars. Specifically, to find a car that has a numerical name from 1 to 2,500.

Here’s how the project was proposed on the discord, by a user going by the name of Isuzu Mysterious Utility Wizard, after the noted truck, back in February:

…and then the first 18 were kind of just willed into existence, getting the process started:

…and things kept going from there. I feel like most of us can rattle off a pretty good set of cars named for numbers – Ford F-150, Renault 4, Porsche 356, BMW 2002, and so on – but I also suspect that the number you can just think of will peter out long before you hit 2,500 cars. Long before.

But this plucky crew of loons, they weren’t scared. But that doesn’t mean there wasn’t some controversy and things to figure out, too. Like, do chassis codes count? Model/Type names? They had to hash all that out:

There’s also a little bit of defiance going on here, where you can tell people are enjoying picking the less-known of a car that may share a name-number with a better-known car. Like going with a VW Type 34 Ghia instead of a Nissan R34 Skyline GTR:

The list does include some multiples in cases where cars do share numbers, of course, so it’s not like a Highlander there can be only one type of situation.

Then there’s the issue with culturally important numbers, like, of course, 69, which got this Fiat-based RV:

This decision was met with some pushback, but the group, as always, talked it out:

I think MassiveFlavouredMilkers defends his decision very well, and is dead on about those two in that pic. I bet that’s the whole reason why they bought the thing in the first place.

What about military equipment? Looks like those were allowed, as you can see with this ZIL E-67 and VW Type 166 Schwimmwagen:

How about buses? Yep, absolutely, when you’re trying to get 2,500 number-named vehicles, you can’t afford to be picky.

How about farm equipment? Screw it, that’s fine, too, so say hello to a Massey Ferguson 583 (I’m using a video here, for fun):

And, once the farm equipment membrane has been breached, you may as well be okay with, oh, riding mowers, even:

Now, that said, the team actually did mostly keep the list to automobiles of some sorts. Some were prototypes, like this rear-engined paleo-Beetle-like Skoda 932:

…and there was even one I recognized as being an image from something I wrote about a while back, about a fascinating SUV-like rear-engined, air-cooled Volkswagen of South Africa prototype car called Project 1021:

You can also see the feral Autopian’s urge to find the most obscure car possible at any opportunity they have, leading to gems like the Moskvitch 427:

…and this wonderful Tunisian car, the Wallys 619:

Honestly, all of this is amazing, and I think the participants in this grand endeavor had some sense of the gravity of the work they were doing. One member of the team, Jettacat, even did some wonderful commemorative artwork commemorating the achievement:

I’m not exactly sure how many people were actively participating in the project indirectly, but some stats were kept for the primary contributors to the list of cars, and some clear patterns emerge.

You can see a bigger version of this chart here, because I’m sure you can’t read that on your phone, no matter how young and beautiful your eyes may be. But what I think is most notable about these stats is that one Autopian, who uses the handle FlavouredMilk (or some variants of that) was responsible for an astounding 1,404 entries in the list, which totaled 2,829 cars (remember, some numbers had multiple cars associated with them), meaning just about half this list was the work of just one glorious kook.

Of the vehicles on the list, 1,794 are cars, 401 are trucks, 311 are agricultural machines, 117 are “equipment,” 71 are military vehicles, 27 RVs, 26 vans, and 17 motorcycles. Not a bad breakdown!

The entire spreadsheet should be available here, with all 2,829 cars. I implore all of you to scrutinize this list and really drink in the depth of this dazzling and delightfully use-unburdened achievement. Because I find it inspiring, and, once again I find reason to be humbled and awed by this gleefully absurd automotive collective we’ve all made here. If you want to join the Discord just click here.