NAME:  2004 New Car and Truck Data
TYPE:  Sample
SIZE:  428 observations, 19 variables

DESCRIPTIVE ABSTRACT:
Specifications are given for 428 new vehicles for the 2004 year. The variables recorded include price, measurements 
relating to the size of the vehicle, and fuel efficiency.

SOURCE:
_Kiplinger's Personal Finance_, December 2003, vol. 57, no. 12, pp. 104-123, http:/www.kiplinger.com (permission to post on 
the JSE Web site kindly granted by PARS International Corporation, 102 West 38th Street, New York, NY 10018)

VARIABLE DESCRIPTIONS:

Columns	Variables
  1- 45	Vehicle Name
 47		Sports Car? (1=yes, 0=no)
 49		Sport Utility Vehicle? (1=yes, 0=no)
 51		Wagon? (1=yes, 0=no)
 53		Minivan? (1=yes, 0=no)
 55		Pickup? (1=yes, 0=no)
 57		All-Wheel Drive? (1=yes, 0=no)
 59		Rear-Wheel Drive? (1=yes, 0=no)
 61- 66	Suggested Retail Price, what the manufacturer thinks the
		vehicle is worth, including adequate profit for the
		automaker and the dealer (U.S. Dollars)
 68- 73	Dealer Cost (or "invoice price"), what the dealership pays
		the manufacturer (U.S. Dollars)
 75- 77	Engine Size (liters)
 79- 80	Number of Cylinders (=-1 if rotary engine)
 82- 84	Horsepower
 86- 87	City Miles Per Gallon
 89- 90	Highway Miles Per Gallon
 92- 95	Weight (Pounds)
 97- 99	Wheel Base (inches)
101-103	Length (inches)
105-106	Width (inches)

Values are aligned and delimited with blanks.
Missing values are denoted with *.

RELATED DATASETS:

A similar dataset appeared as one of the sample datasets shipped with the _Student Edition of Execustat_ (PWS-KENT 1990).

Another similar dataset, submitted by Robin Lock, may be found in the _Journal of Statistics Education_ dataset archive at 
http://www.amstat.org/publications/ jse/datasets/93cars.dat. The accompanying article "1993 New Car Data", Journal of 
Statistics Education, vol. 1, no. 1, by Lock (1993) may be found at the site 
http://www.amstat.org/publications/jse/v1n1/datasets.lock.html.

COMMENTS ON MISSING VALUES:
Length and Width of pickup trucks were not given in _Kiplinger's_. Possible updates to the dataset (viewable on a vehicle 
by vehicle basis) may be found at the site http://www.kiplinger.com/tools/carfinder/; these updates may allow some of the 
missing values to be filled in.

PEDAGOGICAL NOTES:
This is a multi-purpose dataset that can be used at many points in an introductory statistics course. It includes several 
numeric variables which can be examined across a choice of several categorical variables. Students tend to be familiar with 
most of the variables. Furthermore, they also tend to be able to anticipate and pose explanations for many of the 
relationships between variables. Suggested Retail Price/Dealer Cost and the two MPG variables are popular choices as 
response variables. One suggested exploration - try fitting the MPG variables as linear in reciprocal weight (clear 
outliers to this strongly linear pattern are the hybrid gas/electric cars). Other explorations are suggested in the 
article of Lock (1993) referenced above.

SUBMITTED BY:
Roger W. Johnson
Department of Mathematics & Computer Science
South Dakota School of Mines and Technology
501 East St. Joseph Street
Rapid City, South Dakota  57701
(605) 355-3450
Roger.Johnson@sdsmt.edu


