I think do do that... If the same set of brake pads applied to Audi and BMW, I'd have to duplicate the product and then have one for Audi and one for BMW. (even though they were the same part number.

It is rather a pain to move your data to YMM, but once it is done it actually is much easier to maintain. But I don't know of any off-the-shelf modules that work with automotive for Joomla - automotive is a pain. There is an automotive aftermarket database standard called ACES that has some 'out of box' solutions built on it (I believe Wayne uses ACES) But it is very hierarchical and requires you to build everything on priority codes for each vehicle. But if you aren't a manufacturer, you don't really need that. Does Alcon have YMM data they can give you?

But, if you don't want to structure to YMM you are going to end up with more people who stay on your site for 10 seconds or less... People rarely like drilling down on their own, they want the site to do it for them. They are spoiled by big sites, like Pelican, Autozone, etc, that does the 'drilling' for them.

Good luck - automotive aftermarket is really difficult to create decent data for.

I am not sure how you would do it for a straight joomla site... that sounds about right -

For most automotive sites you do have separate records for each YMM and then populate parts within that record. You have a variety of part 'classes' and then the actual part numbers.

We could recommend this thread to people who have problems sleeping at night... smile

Well we're very specialized so not that many products. The effort wouldn't be hard.

The challenge is that every brake kit uses the same pad shape. ...so whether you select Audi, BMW, etc.. it's all the same pad.

I've tried all sorts of combinations for child products, tagging, etc.. but came up short unless i want to duplicate products that fit to more than one make.