Just like my previous community-task topic about manhole covers, this time I implore the worldguessr community to come together and find and collect any available information (including going over plonkit guides) about car manufacturers and possibly car models that help for country-guessing and region-guessing.
Your task is: Just find out any information that uses car manufacturers or car models to identify a country or region within a country and post it here.
For example, here is some useful information from the Russia plonkit about Japanese models being a good indicator for region-guessing Russia: The further east you go, the more often you see Japanese cars with the steering wheel on the right:
You can also ask AI to get some help inferring patterns - if you find one that seems to be a good meta, and you verified it by going to the countries or regions and it seems to match, just post it here - maybe with shared example locations.
Motorcycles, tuk tuks, buses etc are also fine - anything that can transport you.
If you just want to help out by doing a tiny part, have a look at the following images which contain specific patterns for country or region guessing.
Then take one of those tips and verify them with google maps - go into the country or region and compare with neighboring countries or regions to see if the pattern is true or not.
Then post your findings: How true are the patterns and how useful do you think are they from 1-10?
They are extremely common; here is an example in Google Maps:
Just look down the road and a whole fleet of them can be seen.
Correction: I have reread the images, and the Ecuador taxi is indeed included, but grouped with the Colombian one. The taxis are indeed different; on the one hand, Colombian taxis will have the plate number painted on the side and roof of the taxi, and as I said before, they will not have the taxi roof signs painted like a Mexican flag.
Ecuador taxis also have a letter on their roofs along with the rest of the numbers which can tell you where in ecuador you are. They generally start with the first letter of a state’s name. You can memorise the letters of each states car if you are interested, there are only about 24. But beware that the letter P (for pichincha) is found almost everywhere.
Not sure if this is in other parts of the world, but in New Zealand (mostly on the north island, some south) the back of the car shows a distinct blue on the back with a bit of white. The blue is probably because of the adverts on the car showing it is taking street view coverage.
Ok, so I’ve seen some patterns than can help differentiate Mexico:
Our truck market differs from those of Central and South America. Older, second-hand U.S.-spec vehicle (Ford F-150s, Rams, and Chevrolet S-10, etc.) are common, especially in the north and rural areas. Larger trucks are also more prevalent here, while Central America tends to have smaller cargo trucks and vans (like Suzuki and Kia models).
Suzuki is way more popular in Central America and Colombia, where Nissan vehicles are more common here. Also, Fiat and Peugeot tend to be more common in Argentina and Brazil. (this is not a key decider but can help)
If you see Skoda or Citroen vehicles, you can discard Mexico.
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