Carzone Scraper

Carzone has been selling cars online in Ireland since 1998. It is run from Independent House on Talbot Street in Dublin by Webzone Limited, trading as Carzone, a subsidiary of Motion Group inside Mediahuis Ireland, and it calls itself Ireland's Ultimate Motoring Marketplace. The site is single-country and single-currency: euro prices, English only, and a geography of the twenty-six counties of the Republic, from Dublin and Cork down to Leitrim and Longford.

Stock is split into channels that each own a URL branch and a separate search: used cars, used commercials, used bikes, classic and vintage cars over twenty years old, and a new car showroom built from manufacturer trim lists rather than live adverts. A dealer directory sits beside all of it, and every garage gets a storefront page carrying its stock count, opening hours, franchise brands and customer reviews.

Supply is overwhelmingly trade. Most adverts come from motor dealers, many of them flagged as SIMI registered, while private sellers buy a timed package - Basic for forty-five days, Premium for ninety, Ultimate until the car is sold - with up to twenty photos on each advert. Carzone also screens insurer records and refuses to publish Category A and B write-offs, blocking republication on its own pages and on the white-label dealer sites it hosts, so the inventory you collect has already been filtered by a rule most classifieds never apply.

Irish used-car pricing does not transfer from Britain or Germany. The market is small, dealer-led, quoted in euro and run on a registration calendar of its own, so anyone selling, funding or insuring cars here works from Carzone price data rather than a European average.

• Dealer pricing desks rebuild the local comparable set for a make, model, version and registration period, then measure how far a rival in the same county sits above or below.
• Importers and traders compare what a 241 car makes against a 242 of identical specification, and read the imported flag to see how much local supply still carries a UK past.
• Finance and leasing teams work the monthly payment surface: a large slice of stock is advertised with an HP or PCP quote, and the gap between sticker and monthly feeds residual value models.
• Insurers and warranty desks score risk on mileage, owners, NCT expiry and tax band from real adverts, not catalogue assumptions.
• EV desks follow WLTP range, measured battery range and the electric share of stock by county.
• Fleet buyers need the van channel, where the figure on the card is often quoted before VAT at twenty-three per cent and the VAT status hides in the description rather than a field.

Repeat collection turns a snapshot into a series: how long a car stays live, when the asking price is cut, which adverts are relisted, and how supply shifts between Dublin, Cork, Galway and smaller counties.