By Maxxd · Published 21 September 2026
The short answer
A K-Type (also written KType, K-Typ, KTypNr or KTypeNo) is a number that identifies one specific vehicle variant in the TecDoc catalogue — the vehicle and parts database that most of the UK and European aftermarket runs on. The name comes from the German Kraftfahrzeug-Typ, "motor vehicle type".
One K-Type is precise to the level of make, model, body style, engine, power output, fuel, drive and production date range. So a Ford Fiesta Mk7 1.6 EcoBoost ST 182bhp, 2013–2017 has its own K-Type. The Fiesta ST-Line with the 1.0 EcoBoost has a different one. The pre-facelift ST has a different one again.
That precision is the whole point. "Ford Fiesta" doesn't tell you which brake discs fit. A K-Type does.
Where K-Types come from
TecDoc is a catalogue maintained by TecAlliance, a company owned by a consortium of parts manufacturers. Manufacturers publish their parts into TecDoc with the vehicles each part fits; TecDoc maintains the master vehicle list. Each vehicle variant on that list gets a K-Type. Motorcycles and commercial vehicles have their own equivalent identifiers (N-Type for commercials, for instance), but K-Type is the one that matters for cars and light vans.
New K-Types are issued as new variants launch. Old ones don't get reused. That stability is what makes them safe to build a business on.
Why it matters more than any other vehicle ID
There are several ways to identify a car. Only one of them is both precise enough for fitment and shared across the UK aftermarket:
- Make / model / year (MMY) — how customers think, but hopelessly ambiguous. "2015 Fiesta" could be four engines and two trim levels with different brakes.
- VIN — unique to one car, which is too specific: you can't store fitment against every VIN in the country.
- Registration number — great as an input, but a plate is just a label. What you want is what it resolves to.
- ePID — eBay's vehicle ID. Useful, but only inside eBay, and eBay's vehicle catalogue doesn't line up neatly with TecDoc's.
- K-Type — precise to engine and date range, shared by manufacturers, distributors, catalogue systems and reg-lookup services. This is the one to key your data on.
How reg lookup uses K-Types
When a customer types a registration into a parts website, a vehicle data provider (UKVD, CarWeb, VehicleSmart, DVLA-derived services and others) returns what the DVLA knows about that car — make, model, engine size, fuel, year — and, crucially, the K-Type or a shortlist of candidate K-Types.
Your website then filters the catalogue to parts whose fitment includes that K-Type. That's the entire mechanism. If your fitment data isn't keyed to K-Type, reg lookup has nothing to match against, and you end up with fuzzy matching on model names — which is how a 1.0 EcoBoost ends up being offered ST brake discs.
Sometimes a plate resolves to more than one K-Type (the DVLA record doesn't always distinguish variants). A good implementation asks the customer to confirm between the candidates rather than guessing.
K-Type vs ePID: the eBay problem
eBay Motors runs its own vehicle catalogue, and each vehicle in it has an ePID (eBay Product ID). eBay item compatibility — the "parts compatibility" table on a listing — is built from ePIDs, not K-Types.
The two catalogues describe the same cars but were built independently. Some ePIDs cover several K-Types; some K-Types span several ePIDs; some vehicles are named differently. There's no official one-to-one map.
This is why so many parts sellers have a website that says one thing about fitment and an eBay store that says another. The fix is a maintained K-Type → ePID mapping: keep your master fitment keyed to K-Type, translate to ePIDs when you push compatibility to eBay, and re-check the map when eBay updates its catalogue. We cover this in detail on our eBay compatibility page.
K-Type vs ACES
If you deal with US suppliers you'll meet ACES (Aftermarket Catalog Exchange Standard) and its vehicle table, VCdb. ACES is the North American equivalent of the TecDoc approach; its vehicle IDs are called BaseVehicle IDs. They don't map to K-Types either. UK sellers importing US-origin fitment data usually have to rebuild it against K-Types for the UK market, because the vehicle variants sold here are different.
Six K-Type mistakes that cause returns
- Storing fitment as text. "Fits Fiesta Mk7 2008–2017" in a product description is not fitment data. It can't be searched, filtered, or pushed to eBay. Store K-Types.
- Fitting at model level, not variant level. Assigning every Fiesta K-Type to a part because "it's for the Fiesta" is how petrol and diesel, ST and non-ST, get mixed up.
- Ignoring the facelift. Mid-life updates often change brakes, suspension geometry or engines. TecDoc issues new K-Types for a reason. Check the date ranges.
- Trusting supplier spreadsheets blindly. Supplier fitment is a starting point, not gospel. Duplicates, typos and out-of-date variants are normal. De-duplicate and sanity-check before it goes live.
- Treating ePIDs as K-Types. Copying an eBay compatibility list into your website (or vice versa) without translating between the two catalogues.
- Letting it rot. New vehicles launch, old ones get re-catalogued. Fitment data is a process, not a project.
Do you need a TecDoc licence?
Not necessarily. The K-Type numbers are used as identifiers throughout the industry, and many specialist and performance sellers keep their own curated fitment keyed to K-Type without licensing the full TecDoc catalogue. A TecDoc licence gives you TecDoc's own parts-to-vehicle linkages, which is valuable if you sell a large general aftermarket range — brake pads for everything — and less so if you sell 400 specialist parts for six models.
What you do need, either way, is a reg-lookup provider that returns K-Types, and a master fitment dataset keyed to them.
What good looks like
One master fitment dataset, owned by you, where every row is part → K-Type plus any fitment notes and positions. Reg lookup on the website resolves to a K-Type and filters against it. eBay compatibility is generated from the same data through a maintained ePID map. Google Shopping and Amazon feeds carry the vehicle attributes derived from it. Edit fitment once; every channel updates.
That's the model we build for every client. If yours is currently four spreadsheets and a guess, the free fitment audit is the place to start — or read more about how we clean and structure fitment data.