how to line up results into columns?

What about the align attribute of TD? Something like this

<table border="1">
<tr><th>col 1</th><th>col 2</th><th>col 3</th>... and so on</tr>
<cfoutput query="myQuery">
<tr><td align="left">#col1[currentrow]#</td><td align="left">#col2[currentrow]#</td><td align="left">#col3[currentrow]#</td>... and so on</tr>
</cfoutput>
</table>

OK, so looking @ your example table, it's less that cols 3+ are "car type", and more tha the third one is "volvo", the fourth is "toyota" etc.  Do you have a predefined list of car types, or are you at the whim of what ends up in the column from the DB?

If you know the list of possible cars, it's just a matter of looping over that list to create a column for each, and then check the relevant query cell for the presence of that value when rendering each TD for that column, and if it's there: say so; otherwise, leave it blank.

If you don't know the possible car varieties, then loop over the query first to build a list of possible cars: loop over the query, and for each row, loop of the list of cars and add each unique car name to a list of cars.  Then use that latter list to determine which columns are needed for the actual table, and do the loop over the query again to generate the table, as per above.

Of course the best thing to do here would be to normalise your data, so you don't have multiple values in a single DB field.  You might not be in a position to rejig your DB schema, but if you are: consider doing this.

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Adam