404 on base slug

Hi, I’ll try and keep this brief. I’m trying to add an extra taxonomy to a coupon theme, and I want to call it profiles. I’ve managed to get the taxonomy in place under the coupon group of posts.

I’m able to create the coupon and add a store, category and profile in the right hand side bar. However, when the coupon is published I get a 404 on the base slug.

So, to illustrate: https://www.example.com/cars/bmw

The cars part has a 404, but the bmw links to an archive. This looks OK, but I don’t want it to be an archive page, I want it to be a profile page that I can edit. Ideally, I want the profile page to automatically populate with a template page with a featured image I set. I don’t want to have to edit each page after I create it.

My theme has a https://www.example.com/stores page. On the stores page, it has an a to z list of stores that lists the stores in boxes, showing the store name and the featured store image where users can click on each one and be taken to a store page that has all the coupons for that store listed there. I want the exact same list to appear on the cars page, but listing the a to z of cars that users can click on, be taken to a profile of that car (eg BMW) and have all the coupons listed for that car there.

I’ve re saved permalinks each time I made a change, I’ve tried adding a post type as well as a taxonomy, even though I’m not sure that’s necessary. I’ve tried switching to a generic wordpress theme and disabling all plugins but the 404 error remains.

I hope you can help with this.