What enters the register, and how.

The network operates three publications. Each has a documented editorial scope. The scope rule is mechanical and the application is auditable.

A car enters The Registry when it satisfies the Primary Test in full, or when it is admitted under a documented Canon Override.

Primary Test

1. Production capped below 500 units. Caps are taken from manufacturer communications or auction-house archive sourcing. Where a model has multiple body styles, the cap applies to the model line, not the variant.
2. MSRP at launch above $1,000,000 USD. Currency-adjusted to the year of launch. The threshold is mechanical. Exceptions are not made for cars priced near but below.
3. Halo positioning of its marque. The car must be the performance flagship of its maker, not a series production line. A car becomes a halo by intent, not by reception.

Canon Override

Some cars are too central to the canon to exclude on a technicality. The Registry permits a car to enter on canon grounds when it satisfies at least two of the three primary criteria and represents an undisputed flagship in its era. Each canon entry carries a published rationale. The list is closed.

• Porsche 918 Spyder
  Production was 918 units, exceeding the cap. Canon as the third member of the Holy Trinity.
• Ferrari F40
  Production was 1,311 units, exceeding the cap. Canon as the bridge model of the F-series halo line and the last car developed under Enzo Ferrari personally.
• Ferrari F50
  Production was 349 units. MSRP at launch was $475,000 (1995). Canon as a member of the F-series halo line.
• Ferrari Enzo
  Production was 399 units. MSRP at launch was $659,330 (2003). Canon as a member of the F-series halo line.

Out of register

The following cars are sometimes informally called hypercars and are deliberately excluded. They appear on Owning Supercars instead.

• Ferrari SF90 Stradale
  Series production. MSRP at launch $625,000. Two of three primary criteria fail.
• Porsche Carrera GT
  Production 1,270 units. MSRP at launch $440,000 (2004). Two of three primary criteria fail.
• Ferrari 296 GTB / 296 GTS
  Series production, sub-million MSRP.
• McLaren 720S, 750S, Artura
  Series production, sub-million MSRP.
• Lamborghini Aventador SVJ, Huracán STO
  Series production, sub-million MSRP at launch.
• Porsche 911 GT3 RS, 911 Turbo S
  Series production, sub-million MSRP.

Every claim about production, provenance, value, or specification is sourced. The Registry maintains an allowlist of acceptable publishers. Claims sourced outside the allowlist do not run.

1. Allowlist. Manufacturer communications, auction-house archives (RM Sotheby’s, Bonhams, Gooding, Mecum, Bring a Trailer, Cars & Bids), peer publications with editorial standards (Magneto, Octane, Hagerty, Classic Driver, Road & Track, EVO, Car), marque-specific databases. Wikipedia is a starting point. It is not a citation. Forums never count.
2. Drafts. Generated by Claude Sonnet using only the source data. Citation markers attach to every factual claim.
3. Fact-check pass. An independent Claude Haiku call walks every citation marker and verifies the claim against the source. Failed claims are flagged.
4. Style pass. A second Haiku call screens for banned phrases, hedging, low specificity, and voice rule violations.
5. Human approval. Drafts that pass both passes land in a review queue. A human approves before publication. Nothing on The Registry publishes itself.
6. Public footnotes. Every published article carries a Footnotes section listing the sources used.

Where sources disagree, The Registry says so on the page and explains the decision it made. Pretending certainty when documentation is contested is the behaviour we exist to displace.

Borderline classifications and editorial decisions are logged with the date and reasoning. The current changelog is published in the source repository at docs/taxonomy.md and mirrored here in the next release.