Who is IFCAR? Wikipedia's Greatest Oppo Mystery

"No, I don't thank you for the fish at all" (notindetroit) 01/10/2016 at 18:36 • Filed to: car culture, wikipedia, ifcar, public domain photos

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You may not know who IFCAR is. You may be wondering what I’m doing with such a grammatical oddity for a title. But if you’ve ever used a public domain image for your OppositeLock postings, you’ve probably used some of this person’s work. The person who goes by the mysterious handle “IFCAR” on Wikipedia is perhaps the greatest source for copyright-free images of daily drivers in the entirety of Cyberspace. But just who is this anonymous purveyour of automotive photograpy?

Topshot: IFCAR’s Ford Focus station wagon, image by IFCAR, naturally

We do not know of IFCAR’s gender, age, occupation or any personal details. What we do know is that IFCAR resides somewhere in the greater Washington D.C./Arlington, VA metro area, by the number of cars this person photographs with Virginia, Maryland and D.C. license plates and by IFCAR’s own admission. Otherwise, this person’s face is a greater question mark than Regular Car Review’s. IFCAR has !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! , the entire contents of which are reproduced below:

I signed up for Wikipedia after being a longtime reader in July of 2006, after being persuaded by longer-time (now-ex) member Bravada’s appeal for car photos that I read on an automotive forum. I have taken many pictures already and plan to continue to do so for this site.

You can see the changes I’ve made here !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! and the images that I’ve uploaded to the Commons here !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! that may or may not already be inserted in their appropriate articles. Help yourself.

And anyone from the Washington, DC area, particularly the Maryland suburbs, can be on the lookout for their car illustrating the appropriate Wikipedia article. (Be kind, and park on the street or in driveways with the front end towards the street, and back into spaces in parking lots.)

Again, this person lives in the D.C. area (apparently on the Maryland side) and uploads a lot of photos of daily drivers - and aside from once owning or being associated with someone who owned an Olds Bravada or a Focus station wagon, that’s all we know. And yet there is probably no other person on Earth who has unwittingly contributed to so many articles posted on a daily basis on OppositeLock, from editorial and opinion pieces to along the lines of hey check out this cool car!

So I’d like to officially ask for IFCAR to step forward and give us the complete story of how the web’s #1 pictoral documenter of daily drivers came to be. It’ll be the automotive story of the century, I tell you.

boxrocket > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all 01/10/2016 at 19:07

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RCR’s face isn’t much of a mystery anymore. Heck, it’s just about fully exposed in the 1.0L Focus video from this week (rearview mirror).

Hooray for copyright-free images.

pjhusa > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all 01/10/2016 at 19:10

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IFCAR = Institute for Consumer Automotive Research.

ADR-San > No, I don't thank you for the fish at all 05/19/2020 at 13:28

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There is a DeviantArt user with the same name, containing the profile picture of that Focus wagon. However, their gallery is full of Street View snapshots as well as Happy Tree Friends pics, which makes me think that they’re an imposter.