The Toronto Area Car Ownership Study was conducted to define the state-of-the-art in car ownership modelling, to design and administer a longitudinal survey to fulfill the data requirements for such a model, to validate the survey results and to conduct preliminary analysis on those results. An in-depth retrospective telephone survey design was chosen to allow a dynamic nested logit vehicle transactions model to be estimated. The survey was conducted with the help of a computer aid and was found to produce results consistent with prior beliefs about car ownership behaviour. Simple univariate analyses were conducted on the data to determine the relationship between characteristics of the household and the occurrence of vehicle transactions, the choice of vehicle type, the number of years a vehicle is held, and the degree of consumer loyalty to different types of vehicles.