>>A casual user might have entered the "wrong" make of a nearly identical car and as a result would NOT find the specific car.
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>>Imagine having seen a GT86 at a Subaru dealer only from afar / in a hurry and later trying to find the mistakenly self-classyfied "BRX" in the online database
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>Yes, I have situation where users did typos or mistakenly entered the wrong model. Sometimes, they also enter variations of the same models such as BMW 335 and BMW 3-35. This is what free text allows. The ultimate system would be to offer them a list of chocies, and if the model is not among the choices, there is another form to add it and link it to the make.

One easy filter to vet against is the classification list offered over here by the ministry overseeing the process of car registration, tax classification and similar tasks. Probably something similar exists for your case (at least today, we germans tend to forge ahead in such areas). Yes, there are self-built or self-imported cars with the need for adding to this list, but most of the time such conflicts stem from user input error.
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>So, yes, in some searches, they cannot find what they are looking for as the data has been entered in various forms. Sometimes, even having a human to look at it makes it difficult to understand what was the initial intention of the user as to know what was the model exactly.