In the history of automotive, one of the most important revolutions wasn't a new engine or some sleek design; rather, it was one simple, powerful idea. Instead of building cars as fast as possible and hoping to catch errors at the final inspection, Toyota was obsessed with building quality into every step. They could stop the entire assembly line to fix one tiny mistake, ensuring the problem was solved at the source. This philosophy redefined automotive reliability. We believe the way you shop for cars deserves that same commitment. For too long, you've had to sift through listings with missing features and incorrect specs. That’s why we’re changing our own assembly line.

TL;DR

Today, we’re introducing a small, but monumentally important feature: Window Sticker Verified listings.

• Starting this week, you may start seeing badges on listings indicating whether Visor has reviewed the window sticker to determine the exact build specification of the vehicle being sold.

• Very, very few listings will have this badge to start, but we will be rapidly expanding our verification system over the coming months.

• This feature comes as part of a massive overhaul of our listing processing system… more on that later :)

• Despite our best efforts, we still may not be 100.0% accurate on every single verified listing. We’re looking forward to hearing your feedback and any reports of inaccuracies!

What is a Window Sticker?

The window sticker, federally mandated to be shown on every new vehicle sold in the United States, is by far the foremost source of truth to determine the exact build specification of a vehicle. It provides an overwhelming wealth of information, to name just a few elements:

• Basic characteristics like model, trim, drivetrain

• Color configuration

• Standard and installed options

• Original MSRP

• Country of production and port of entry

Visor’s new, state of the art processing and verification system

If you’ve noticed that we’ve slowed down a bit on releasing shiny new features over the past few months, it’s mostly because we’ve been scheming and working on exactly this. We took our time to completely rethink the way we were processing listing information to prioritize accuracy, reliability, and update frequency.

We have developed brand new, state of the art processing methods to digest information from a variety of trusted sources to best determine the build specification of every listing we look at. These new methods were only made possible due to recent advances in cloud computing and artificial intelligence.

These new systems are only in their infancy. Over time, these systems will become battle hardened to the point where Visor will have the most accurate vehicle listing information anywhere.

A small, but worthy upgrade to Installed Options

In other news, we also took this opportunity to make Installed Options info more detailed on every listing. Now, you’ll be able to expand each option to see further information as well as see “sub-options” (i.e. options that are included within others).

What’s next

• Expanding our new processing system to handle more listings (like, a LOT more)

• Some useful new tools for off-market listings (think comparables and valuation)

• Some long overdue work on making the site more discoverable to search engines