SirGCal, if you are looking to car salesmen for their opinion on ANYTHING, we all have our doubts about your opinions anyways!
DTMAce brings a good point, but I'll take it a step further. Rather than give us the option to textually input our engine type, I propose keeping the drop-down menu but giving all cars the option of any engine type. Thus you could select a V12 or a turbo V6 for your Pontiac Grand Prix if you wanted to. People will obviously abuse or confuse this occasionally, but it will make it easy to pick out. It might even make people think twice before putting in something that doesn't make sense, and you can always put a big bold disclaimer next to it that says you don't have to input this field. This would not be the most accurate way to collect data, but it would probably be less time-consuming for PB than adding in the available engine types for every new model that gets added to the database, right?
I do think it's a bit disappointing that the new trend in engine offerings (forced induction instead of more cylinders) makes this Fuelly feature irrelevant. The point of the engine configuration field is so that different engine options can be distinguished from eachother in fuel tracking, for the purpose of more accurate tracking between the two -- since it doesn't add anything to the individual's Fuelly experience. This would allow those of us who want more accurate tracking to be part of it, and those who don't care to, don't have to. Plus, if someone doesn't know the type of engine in their car, do you really want to take their data seriously? Most of those people are probably the same ones who occasionally add the odd 75mpg fill-up and never fix it.
In the end (and I've participated in this discussion before) PB has convinced me that we should not over-complicate the site to try to make data collection easier. I think useful data acquisition is easy enough for those of us who know how to use the site and/or ask for help, and PB and Matt have not been inactive making the site better lately anyways.
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