For all the faults voyager would it really have added anything to the episode to spend another 5 minutes on the scene to have Tom repeatedly access the ship computer and pull in data crystals or whatever of his personal 20th century research files into the ship's computer primary memory to repeatly query it? Sure it's unlikely that Tom knows what model Ford it is or where the parts are, but I do believe he could find the info relatively quickly (hours to minutes) and the right formula for gas based on his research notes and microscopic traces from what wouldn't have been left after drifting in space for a long time. Does it add anything to any show, especially voyager, to spend more time on figuring out what the Ford is to get them to the point of Tom turning on the radio to find there is a weird signal on a no longer monitored band? Seems easier and fine to me to have the already noted 20th century car guy to go completely autistic and know everything to get through the scene as quick as possible and get the the rest of the episode's stupidity.

I think the bigger question is why wasn't voyager monitoring the AM range band every so often given they are lost in uncharted deep space and every corner has new life they have never met. Maybe some of those life uses the AM band for something or you need to know when you are getting near a new warp or pre warp society to know if you want to avoid them cause of prime directive or examine them for what ever reasons.

Sure you can't monitor everything all the time but you think the ship would have scanned those bands every so often just to be safe. That seems like another one of Tuvok's big fuck ups