Cars.co.za

Search vehicles for sale

Use this when someone wants to find, browse, price or shortlist a car for sale in South Africa — new or used, from Cars.co.za's live listings. It covers cars for sale, used cars, new cars, dealer stock, bakkies, family SUVs, first cars, cheap cars under a budget, and searches by make, model, price, province or town, year, mileage, fuel type or transmission. Use it for 'what's available', 'how much are they', 'the cheapest', 'the newest', 'near me'. EVERY parameter is optional, and no make or mod

Build a search link

Use this when the user should be sent to browse a search on cars.co.za themselves — after search_vehicles, when they want the full result set rather than six listings, or when they ask for a link. It only builds the URL; call search_vehicles when they want to see actual cars. The URL is returned in `payload` — always use this rather than assembling a cars.co.za URL yourself, as hand-built paths 404.

Find expert reviews and advice

Use this when the question is about whether a car is any good, rather than what is for sale: reliability, common problems, running costs, what it is like to live with, which of several to buy, best-of and recommendation questions, and South African road tests and news. It equally covers buying advice with no particular car in mind — what to check when buying used, guidance for a first-time buyer, what a private sale needs, which cars hold their value, Car of the Year and other awards. `keywordPh

Look up model specifications

Use this for a factual figure about a current model: what it costs new, power, torque, fuel consumption, boot space, seats, 0-100, towing, engine, transmission — for South African specification, in rand and litres per 100km. Never answer such a figure from memory. For a comparison, pass every model in `models` in ONE call, which grounds all sides at once. Use find_articles instead for whether a car is good, reliable or comfortable, and search_vehicles for what is actually for sale and at what pr

Look up one listing's spec sheet and seller

Use this when the user asks about one particular listing they have already been shown — 'what engine does the second one have', 'does that one have leather', 'who's selling it'. Takes the `id` of a listing returned by search_vehicles, and describes that exact car rather than the model in general. Returns an error in place of the sheet if that listing carries none, in which case fall back to get_model_specs; `dealer` is still there either way.

Read an article

Use this when an article from find_articles looks like it answers the question but the headline is not enough — a verdict, a specific criticism, what a road test concluded. Takes an `id` from find_articles. Read it before summarising what a review said, rather than inferring from the title.