Conducting a COUNT without using the inbuilt COUNT(*) function [closed] - sql

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How would one go about counting fields in a table based on a condition without using the inbuilt COUNT function? Is there a way to do this?
Requirements are as follows:
Create a PL/SQL function called findtotalcarmodels to return the total
number of cars belonging to a particular model. The function should have a single
IN parameter as model_name. You should then use an explicit cursor to count the
number of cars belonging to that car model and return the final count. You must NOT
use any implicit cursors, table joins, subqueries, set operators, group functions or SQL
functions (such as COUNT) to create this function.

Answer 1

SUM(CASE WHEN <condition on your fields> THEN 1 ELSE 0 END)

Answer 2

This is probably the silliest answer I am writing. Nobody in the industry works like this.
Here goes the answer:
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION findtotalcarmodels
( model_name IN VARCHAR2)
IS
CURSOR mycur IS
SELECT model_name_col FROM car_table;
mycount INTEGER := 0;
current_model_name VARCHAR2(10);
BEGIN
OPEN mycur;
FETCH mycur INTO current_model_name;
WHILE mycur%FOUND LOOP
IF current_model_name = model_name THEN
mycount := mycount + 1;
END IF;
FETCH mycur INTO current_model_name;
END LOOP;
CLOSE mycur;
dbms_output.put_line('The count is ' || mycount);
END;
/