Vehicles & Fitment
Fitment is the relationship between a vehicle and the parts that fit it. Repco is the one supplier on MultiCartAPI that exposes this: you can pick a vehicle and get every compatible part, or take a part and see every vehicle it fits. This concept page explains the moving pieces; the Find Parts by Vehicle guide shows the calls.
The vehicle taxonomy
Every Repco vehicle is identified by a vehicle_code. A vehicle is described by six levels:
Make → Model → Year → Series → Engine → Variant
For example: FORD → FALCON → 2016 → FG X → 4.0L 6cyl → XR6, which resolves to a single
vehicle_code. The full taxonomy contains 23,734 vehicles, stored server-side, so browsing it is
instant and does not touch Repco.
The cascade
Rather than return the entire taxonomy at once, MCA exposes it as a cascade: you send the levels you have chosen so far, and the API returns the options for the next unfilled level.
| Call sends | API returns |
|---|---|
{} | level: "make" — the list of makes |
{ make } | level: "model" |
{ make, model } | level: "year" (integers, newest first) |
{ make, model, year } | level: "series" |
{ make, model, year, series } | level: "engine" |
{ make, model, year, series, engine } | level: "variant" — each option carries a vehicle_code |
Once you reach the variant level you have a vehicle_code, which is the key to everything else.
Year is a range
A vehicle_code is year-independent — each vehicle carries a year_from/year_to range and a
display year_range (e.g. 2014-2016). When you pass a year to the cascade, MCA matches it against
that range.
The fitment index
Repco only lets you shop by vehicle — there is no "which vehicles does this part fit?" page on
their site. MCA builds the reverse direction itself by inverting Repco's "shop this vehicle"
results: for each vehicle it collects every part on offer, producing a stored
product_code × vehicle_code index. That index powers both directions:
- Search (
vehicle_code→ parts) — everything that fits a vehicle. - Reverse (
product_code→ vehicles) — every vehicle a part fits.
Parts flagged universal (fitting many makes — e.g. a common consumable) are stored compactly so
they do not bloat the index.
The swept flag
Building the full index is a large crawl, so it runs progressively across the 23,734 vehicles. Each
vehicle carries a swept flag telling you whether it has been indexed yet:
swept: true— the vehicle has been crawled; its part list is complete and served from the stored index.swept: false— the vehicle has not been crawled yet. A fitment search returnstotal: 0, but that is not "no compatible parts" — it just means "not indexed yet".
Zero parts on an un-swept vehicle is not empty
Always check vehicle.swept before interpreting an empty parts list. swept: false with
total: 0 means the vehicle has not been indexed. You can still create a fitment collection for it —
MCA runs the vehicle lookup live on the spot, returns the parts, and persists them so the vehicle
becomes swept for everyone afterwards.
Turning fitment into a collection
The vehicle-first flow ends with a one-call endpoint that creates a running collection of every part that fits a vehicle — captured at your customer postcode (for live freight and pricing) and enqueued immediately. Because of the live-on-the-spot lookup above, this works for any vehicle, whether or not it has been swept.