When you submit a Cars & Trucks listing to the eBay Motors US marketplace, we strongly recommend that you avoid specifying the Manufacturer and Model item specifics in most cases. In most cases, this information will be pre-filled based on the category you select.

  • If you specify a primary or secondary category that represents a distinct manufacturer and model, eBay automatically populates the correct Manufacturer and Model item specifics.

    For example, if the category is 6015 (Porsche > Boxster), the Manufacturer is automatically set to "Porsche" and the Model to "Boxster."

    Therefore, do not specify the Manufacturer and Model item specifics when you specify a category that is associated with a distinct manufacturer and model. If you do, you may receive an error if these item specifics do not correctly match the category.

    For example, if the category ID is 6015, then the Manufacturer must be "Porsche" and the Model must be "Boxster". In this case, if you specify that the Model is "912", you will receive an error.

  • If your vehicle is not represented by a distinct eBay Motors category, you may specify a generic ID (e.g., 6058 for Porsche > Other Models,) in the appropriate category property and specify the Model item specific. The value of your Model item specific will be appended to the title of your listing.

    Use caution when including the Manufacturer and Model item specifics with generic categories. If you specify a generic ID in the category property (e.g., 6058 for Porsche > Other Models,) but you include Manufacturer and/or Model item specifics that match a category with a predefined distinct model, eBay will list the vehicle in a more generic category (e.g., All Models,) rather than the distinct category implies by the item specifics you specified. In this case, buyers might not find the listing where the seller intended to place it.

  • You can use the Submodel item specific to append more details about the model (up to 12 characters). eBay adds a space and appends the text to the "Manufacturer : Model" value in the listing title at the top of the View Item page, in the Item Specifics section of the page, and in search results.

    Note: eBay does not actually store the submodel text as part of the title, so Item.Title does not include the text in GetItem.

  • If you are listing in a Motorcycles category, eBay handles the Manufacturer and Model item specifics for Motorcycle categories so that they are similar to the Cars & Trucks category format.

    For example, instead of returning Manufacturer="BMW : F-Series" and Model="F-Series", GetItem will return Manufacturer="BMW" and Model="F-Series".

    As with Cars & Trucks, you should not specify Manufacturer and Model item specifics when a motorcycle is represented by a distinct eBay Motors category (i.e., a category other than "All Models" or "Other"). eBay pre-fills these item specifics based on the parent and leaf category.

    If the seller specifies a Model item specific for a motorcycle in a distinct category, eBay may replace the value and pre-fill the Model item specific based on the leaf category (e.g., F-series). If this occurs, eBay may move the Model value the seller specified into the Submodel item specific so that no data will be lost.

    This means the item specific that are returned in GetItem may be different from the corresponding item specific you specify in AddItem and related calls.