Search by car optimisation

[Khaostar]

Hi everyone.

I'm currently building a website that will sell car paint (touch up pens, spray cans, etc). The problem is, as you can guess, there is a LOT of products. I want to optimize this a bit.

Right now, every combinaison of color code and car (make, model, year) is a single product. But, a color code car be available for multiple cars. So i'm trying to merge every product that have the same color code without affecting the search method.

Maybe that sounds complicated. Let's make an example.

Actual structure : (color code : make : model : year) Color code is the product title, everything else is a custom field

D06 : Mistsubishi : Lancer : 2010
D06 : Mistsubishi : Lancer : 2011
D06 : Mistsubishi : Lancer : 2012
D06 : Mistsubishi : Outlander Sport : 2016
D06 : Mistsubishi : Lancer EV)LUTION : 2015
... and so on

So right here, I have 5 products for only 1 color code (and some color code have more than 50 cars!).
With this, it's easy to search bye make, then model, then year with a plugin like this one : https://breakdesigns.net/extensions/custom-filters

For performance purpose, I would like to merge all the product that have the same color code, but i'm not sure it's gonna work. Here is my acutal plan (example) :

Color Code : D06
Make : Mitsubishi
Models (mutliple entries) : Lancer, Lancer Evolution, Outlander Sport
Years (multiples entries) : 2010, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2016

By doing that, I have one product for all the cases, but it will not work for the "search by filter". If I select "Mitsubishi" in the first search filter, it's gonna show me "Lancer", "Lancer Evolution" and "Outlander Sport" in the next filter, witch is great. But after that, no matter which model I choose, the third filter (year) will display every years. There is no way I can tell that the 2016 years is only available if the Outlander Sport is selected.

So i'm stuck here right noe. I can't see how to merge some products to optimize this site. There is more than 300 000 combinaisons of color codes and cars. That's gonna be painful if I create all those products.

Anyone has an idea to help me with that? Maybe there is a solution that I didn't found. A plugin or a virtuemart feature...

Thanks in advance!

[Studio 42]

Hi,
Why you dont use childs for this ?