Camberly
Car buyer's research platform for South Africa
Lifestyle-based discovery, feature-ladder comparison across up to 5 cars, SA-specific calculators using live DoE fuel prices and prime rate, and a paid Pro tier targeting enthusiasts and creators.
Domain
camberly.co.za
Pro tier
R79 / R249 / mo
Compare up to
5 cars
SA calculators
3 tools
The problem
What I set out to solve
Car research in South Africa is fragmented — pricing spread across dealer sites, real fuel consumption hidden, financing math opaque, and video walkarounds buried on YouTube. Buyers waste hours stitching signals together and still miss the tradeoffs that matter.
What I built
The build
- Lifestyle-based discovery — 8 categories (Daily Commuter, Family Car, Bakkie, Weekend Adventure, Budget Friendly, First Car, Fast & Fun, Electric/Hybrid) filtering across 20 SA-specific models with full variant tables.
- Rich model pages at /cars/[make]/[model] — hero, variant table, estimated monthly cost calculated client-side using SA prime rate + live DoE fuel prices, competitor matching, embedded showroom videos.
- Feature-ladder comparison engine — side-by-side up to 5 cars, per-variant feature resolution, category-level scoring, and diff visualization.
- Showroom — YouTube-embedded walkarounds indexed by make/model/year ("no talk, no fluff").
- Three SA-specific calculators: fuel cost (live DoE prices), loan analyser (initiation + admin fees, deal rating vs prime), cost of ownership (conditional cost toggles).
- Paid Pro tier — Enthusiast R79/mo (7-day trial), Creator R249/mo (14-day trial), gating full feature ladder, comparison scores, multi-feature search, and up-to-5-car comparison.
Key decision
Why feature-ladder comparison instead of raw specs
Every car site shows specs. The insight buyers actually want is: at what trim do I get feature X, and what's the price step to get there? The ladder computes this per feature per variant, then rolls up into a category score you can eyeball. It's the only comparison model that answers "how much more do I pay for the thing I actually want."
Outcome
Where it landed
- ✓Shipped and live at camberly.co.za with production DNS, SSL, and analytics.
- ✓Monetization live from day one — 2-tier Pro subscription with free trials.
- ✓Full monorepo (apps/web + apps/api) with RBAC, feature flags, block-based content, PWA offline.
- ✓Video showroom seeded with SA-relevant walkarounds.
Stack
Deep dive
Going deeper
Optional reading for the technically curious.