Meet The Hero Who Filled The NAPA Auto Parts Catalogue With The Obscure Cars Of Your Dreams

Walk up to any auto parts counter, and they’ll ask you the usual question—”year, make, and model?” If you’re driving a 2022 Ford F-150, or a 2007 Honda Civic, you’d expect those to be in the database. But what if you have a 1974 Bricklin SV-1, or a 1990 Vector W8? Well, NAPA will know what you’re talking about, thanks in part to the efforts of one man.

When you buy a car, it comes with some documentation. An owner’s manual, maybe something for the radio, and a service log for the dealership. What it doesn’t come with is a list of part numbers for everything in the vehicle. Instead, databases are maintained by automakers and parts stores alike that correlate Year, Make, and Model with whatever air filter, spark plug, or ball joint you might be looking for.

When parts stores first started putting together their electronic parts databases, priority was given to the most popular models from the largest automakers. This left lots of obscure and low-production automobiles out of the listings. For Matt Sexton, that couldn’t stand. He’s made it his mission to get as many oddball cars into the NAPA database as possible.

Data Obscura

I first ran into Matt in the best of ways—in the comments on The Autopian. I’d written an article on Nissan’s groundbreaking Altra EV and linked to a weird video about its windscreen wipers. He popped in with a rather intriguing comment. “I’m directly responsible for the fact you can walk into any NAPA store in the country and have them look up wiper blades for your Nissan Altra EV,” he said.

Given that we were talking about an obscure 1990s prototype EV built in a run of just 200 vehicles, that sounded insane. I had to know more.

I spoke with Matt, who filled me in on the whole story, which starts a long time ago. “My Dad started [his] NAPA store in 1963,” he tells me. “I would hang around quite a bit, [doing] some odd jobs sometimes.” When it came time to enter the workforce, it only made sense that he join the family business. “In 1985, I officially started on the payroll at 14, so I’ve been around cars and thought cars daily for most of my life,” he says. “It’s a really cool thing when you like cars as much as I do.”

Matt’s career had begun firmly in the analog era. “When I started working the counter in the early 90’s, we were still doing most of our lookups with paper catalogs,” he explains. The pages were filled with cars, both routine and obscure. “Searching in the paper catalogs was sometimes like discovering new worlds, he explains. “Suppose I was looking up wiper blades for a Nissan Altima, there’s a good chance I’d see Nissan Altra EV right below it, and if I didn’t know what it was, I’d look it up.” Flipping through various parts listings proved educational. “I was amazed at some of the listings we had… wipers were always a good one, since most cars have wipers and they’re fairly universal,” he says. “The spark plug books were fascinating too, since most cars use spark plugs and applications were pretty widely covered by either Autolite or especially Champion, who’s been around since the early days of the automobile in the U.S.”

Soon enough, the industry was moving to computer catalogues, and Matt was right there at the ground floor. “When NAPA‘s first electronic cataloging came out, it was a pretty rudimentary thing… it had most of the applications you really needed for most requests we typically received,” he says. “It was coded by number, 1 was Acura and 78 was Yugo, and only went back to 1970 I think.” As the electronic catalogue came to replace the paper books in regular use, it quickly expanded. “Suddenly one day a whole bunch of three-digit Makes appeared, I remember 199 being Aston Martin, 207 being Ferrari and 210 being Lamborghini, for example,” Matt explains. “To a guy like me, having all this access to all this cool new stuff was magical.”

The key thing that stood out to Matt was that the catalogue wasn’t just covering the mainstream products. Updates continued to come through thick and fast, expanding to models both new and old. “Not that I ever expected to use it really, but it showed NAPA was getting serious about including more than just the basics,” he says. “A few years [in], there was this massive dump of new Makes, going back to 1900!” He found out that NAPA had sourced a great deal of information from the Standard Catalog of American Cars, which had extensive historical records. “We now had everything from Essex to Kaiser to Terraplane,” he says with awe. “I would spend a lot of time just poking around in it, seeing what I could find.”

Matt came to learn how that NAPA was populating its electronic catalogue. “The way it works is NAPA‘s suppliers are supposed to review any new make & models added to the vehicle table, and submit any applications they might have for these,” he explains. “So in theory, everything that’s in the paper catalog should have eventually ended up in the computer catalog… but it didn’t.” He found that not everything from the old books was getting ported forward. “As expansive as the computer catalog now was, there were listings in the paper catalogs for Makes and Models that were still not represented in the computer at all.”

As it turned out, Matt found a way he could help rectify this issue. “NAPA used to have a program where if you found an error in an electronically cataloged application, you could submit this discrepancy to the catalog people, and if they could confirm the error, they would fix it and send you a $20 incentive,” he says.  “Amazingly, this also applied to listings that were in the paper catalogs but brought up no data on that application in the computer.” He quickly found plenty of corrections to send into head office. “I made a fair amount of money off this program before they killed it… I don’t think I’m solely to blame for that!” he laughs.

It was in the process of submitting these corrections he happened across some missing cars from automakers that weren’t in the electronic system at all. “I sent through some discrepancies where the Make or Model did not exist in the vehicle table at all, and they got rejected by reason that the ‘Make does not exist in the vehicle table.'” he says. “So I asked, well why not then?”

“Eventually I got the emails of the guys in the NAPA corporate cataloging department in Atlanta, and I sent them a long-winded email about why I thought these obscure listings were important,” he says. “After hearing me out, in late 2008 they agreed to let me submit vehicles for inclusion into the vehicle table.” Suddenly, his mission was clear. “They sent me a spreadsheet to use, and said, ‘We will research the information you send.  If we think it’s valid and needs to be added we will do so.'” he explains. “So I got to work…. and for the record, I never submitted any new vehicle that got rejected.”

Since then, Matt has worked to get all kinds of automotive exotica into the NAPA parts database. We’re talking prototype cars that were built in tiny runs, cars built by forgotten automakers… cars that barely existed before the factories they came from were foreclosed upon and shut down. Matt didn’t just submit an entry for the Nissan Altra EV, he also made sure NAPA was aware of the Ford Ranger Electric and Toyota RAV4 Electric, too. Yes—the ancient ones from decades ago. He saw to it that every TVR since 1971 was in the books, too. Other exotics he’s submitted include the Vector M8 and M12, the Morgan three-wheeler, the Panoz Roadster, and even the beloved Bricklin SV-1. Koenigsegg and Spyker models are in the NAPA books, too, thanks to Matt’s hard work.

I’ve only named a handful of the full list Matt provided; it’s a project he continues to this day. I decided I had to see for myself, and I was duly impressed—you can chuck a 1967 Toyota 2000GT and find some of the common parts right on the NAPA website. You could literally walk into a store and find the spark plugs you need for one of the rarest Toyotas ever built, and in part that is thanks to Matt’s work.

It might sound odd to focus on such obscure models. After all, who is going into NAPA to look up parts for a Bollare Bluecar or Pininfarina Spider? The vast majority of customers are looking for parts for mainstream modern cars and trucks. When Matt first advocated for covering the weird stuff, the pushback he received was that it wasn’t worth the time. “I really can’t argue with that logic, but by then, the catalog was pretty well fully fleshed out, at least as far as the common listings were concerned,” he says. “My argument was, everybody has the easy stuff… why not prove how much better we are than the others?”

While it’s an edge case, he believes it proves something about the business.  “No one’s likely to come to us for parts for a Bitter, but doesn’t it show the public that there’s no vehicle we haven’t heard of?” he says. It’s also true that obscure cars have a lot of weird parts, but they often have a lot of mainstream ones, too. “Sure, if you’re part of the Bricklin Club you probably know that ball joints for an SV-1 are AMC pieces,” he says. “But wouldn’t it be nice if a Bricklin owner could go into any NAPA store, and have a kid look up ball joints for his SV-1 without any issue, even if he’s never heard of one? Especially since we might already have them on the shelf.”

When Matt first contacted NAPA’s database team about submitting more cars, he was instructed to focus his efforts on what was properly relevant. “My submissions must be North American, road legal complete cars, meaning kit cars and Show & Display cars wouldn’t be considered,” he says. “I needed to supply supporting documentation for this, and complete as many data fields in the template as practical.” The key was making sure he got the information right, first time. “Accuracy was of utmost importance, because all the vendors reference the vehicle table for supplying parts listings,” he says. “If you get it wrong you can miss out on sales, or at least make folks question the accuracy of your data.” It’s also a problem for customers at the parts counter. “People don’t want to hear you “assume” a 1991 Yugo is the same as a 1990,” he says, something that would resonate with many a car enthusiast.

“My first submission was the Tucker 48, which was fairly easy, and I wanted to start with that one because I knew Champion had spark plugs listed for it, and thought that would be the coolest thing ever,” he says. “These were fairly easy to document, since the fate of basically every Tucker ever built is known.” Over time, he developed a routine approach when it came to submitting cars. “I would basically Google the vehicle and find out everything I could about it,” he says. “The usual place to start was either a marque specialist website or forum… there’s a surprising amount of knowledge out there specific to certain models of cars that proves to be indispensable,” he says. “Once I had my data template filled out, I would do a little like Mercedes does on The Autopian, and give a brief historical writeup on the car, and then I would mention the parts listings our paper catalog already had for the submitted vehicle, as a way of validating the submission’s veracity.”

With the Tucker submitted, his work continued apace. Next up was the 1993 Ford Mustang Cobra R, then the Pininfarina Spider. “The history on the Pininfarina takes a fair bit of explanation, and clarification on why it’s not technically a Fiat,” he says. “Almost all catalogs get this wrong, and even ours still isn’t 100% correct, long after I added it.” The obscure Bitter SC came next, posing some real challenge. “There’s not a lot of Bitter knowledge out there, and I was having difficulty determining whether U.S. imports included 1981 and 1987 model year cars,” he says.

“I started reaching out to owners I’d found through the Bitter Owners Club, beginning my experiences with emailing experts and owners for help with the data.” It also taught him the value of car registries as a data source. ” They’re extremely useful for determining what model years cars were sold as, as well as approximate vehicle population size.”  Sadly, he was only able to list coolant and A/C flush as Bitter parts at NAPA, due to the limited information on offer. “I feel bad for Bitter owners, parts are nearly unobtainable, but whatever is shared with other cars, the people that know don’t like sharing too much,” he says. “And certainly very few parts suppliers even bother attempting parts cataloging.”

When it came to Spyker’s range, the Spyker Owners Forum proved invaluable with its registry of all known Spykers arranged by VIN. “This was enlightening, and after becoming part of the forum I met a Dutch fellow named Edvar van Daalen, who had developed a way to webscrape CarFax for Spyker VINs,” Matt explains. “It was he who taught me how VINs work, how they are put together, the meaning of all the digits, and how you can use this knowledge.”  Matt also began using EPA certification data for information on U.S. market cars, which further supported his research.  He took the lessons learned from the Spyker community, and applied them further when he started later researching Koenigseggs. “That’s what ultimately led to me starting the Koenigsegg Registry project, which lives on today as EggRegistry.com,” he says with pride.

Matt credits the car community for his many research successes. “A lot of my data came from marque specialists, marque-specific web pages and actual owners I reached out to that were happy to share information,” he says. “One thing I learned, enthusiasts by and large love talking to people about their cars, and love teaching others about them, and spreading that passion.”

Ultimately, Matt’s efforts have been a labor of love. Sure, NAPA is never going to carry a set of carbon brakes for a Pininfarina Battista, nor seatbelts for a Honda FCX. Matt’s work is still limited to the parts that are actually on offer at the nation-spanning retailer. That means in many cases, you’re only going to find common stuff that your obscure automaker might have nabbed from a mainstream supplier or major OEM. If your oddball car doesn’t use a mainstream engine or drivetrain, the parts listings can be limited to off-the-shelf stuff like coolant or wiper blades.

But still, there are some wonderful surprises. If you wander in looking for an ignition coil for a Subaru 360, or a 12-volt battery for your Tesla Roadster, the listing is there waiting.

It’s obvious not very practical for auto parts retailers to pay much attention to forgotten models from forgotten brands, to be sure. And yet, it’s somehow nice to see that they’re remembered, in databases and parts records across the land. Acknowledging the memories of the truly weird cars is really a key value of many enthusiasts, and Matt’s work shows that in spades. Plus, I just wrote an article about NAPA Auto Parts, so there’s definitely a marketing benefit to all of that hard work.

Image credits: Subaru, Koenigsegg, Bricklin, NAPA photo from Steve Morgan CC BY-SA 3.0, NAPA via screenshot