TrueCar, Inc. Agreement Incorporates Black Book Used Car Values to Enhance New ClearBook.com Consumer Website.
SANTA MONICA, Calif., May 9, 2011 —TrueCar, which provides consumers with reliable, trustworthy car pricing information, has reached an agreement with National Auto Research, a division of Hearst Business Media, to license Black Book used car values. This allows TrueCar to provide richer information and further enhance its recently launched used car pricing website, ClearBook.com, with extensive information supplied by Black Book, a valued automotive industry resource for more than 60 years.
ClearBook is the first used vehicle pricing website, free to consumers, that analyzes listing and transaction prices for the used car marketplace. With ClearBook, used car purchasers obtain objective, unbiased price guidance for a car based on year, make, model, mileage and condition. With the addition of Black Book’s values, the industry’s most relied upon source for trade-in prices, consumers will now know the real value of their trade-in before they walk into the dealership, helping to facilitate a fair transaction between buyer and seller.
Scott Painter, CEO and Founder of TrueCar and ClearBook, said, “Black Book’s data is an invaluable tool in generating a fair value for the sale or trade-in price of a used vehicle. Consumers in the market for a used car will benefit greatly from this relationship.”
The next ClearBook upgrade will combine trade-in value, target sales price, and list price to give buyers and sellers the most transparent view into vehicle pricing, whether that vehicle is a trade-in or sold privately.
Tom Cross, President of Black Book, said, “Pricing transparency helps consumers and dealers make the car buying and selling processes easier. Black Book’s retail trade-in pricing provides consumers with very accurate and up to date insight into the used car trade-in market and nicely rounds out the ClearBook.com experience. We are delighted to be working with the TrueCar team, and are excited about the value that this new tool brings to automotive consumers.”
Painter went on to say, “Black Book’s commitment to comprehensive, unbiased pricing information is in lock-step with the goals we have set to create a fair, trustworthy and informed marketplace. Black Book partnering with us is a ringing endorsement of the value proposition ClearBook and TrueCar both offer consumers.”
About Hearst Business Media
Hearst Business Media, a division of Hearst Corporation, operates more than 20 business-to-business information services, electronic databases and publications. The group has holdings in the automotive, electronic, medical/pharmaceutical and finance industries.
About Black Book
Best known in the Automotive Industry for providing timely, independent, and accurate vehicle pricing data, the Black Book® family of vehicle appraisal guides (www.BlackBookUSA.com) is published by National Auto Research, a division of Hearst Business Media. New and used car dealers, lenders, manufacturers, fleet remarketers, and government agencies have relied on Black Book since 1955. Black Book provides values for both new and used vehicles, including cars and light trucks produced since 1946, collectible and exotic vehicles, motorcycles, ATVs, snowmobiles, personal watercraft, and heavy duty commercial trucks and trailers. Black Book data is published daily in multiple electronic formats including data feeds, Internet-based applications, hand held PDAs, web enabled cell phones, Pocket PCs, iPhone, iPad, iTouch, Droid, BlackBerry and Palm devices, SmartPhones, Micro Browsers, online trade appraisal services, and in a variety of other custom products. Printed versions are also available on a weekly basis. Whether you’re buying, selling, or lending, Black Book’s mission is to provide the Automotive Industry with timely, independent, and accurate information to help make the right decisions.
About TrueCar, Inc.
TrueCar, Inc. is an automotive solutions provider focused on changing how cars are sold by providing a significantly better customer experience while helping qualified dealer partners to gain incremental market share and reduce costs. TrueCar.com is a transparent, visual publisher of new car transaction data. TrueCar.com price reports help both dealers and consumers to agree on the parameters of a fair deal by providing an accurate, comprehensive and simple understanding of what others actually paid for the identically equipped new car over the last 30 days both locally and nationally. TrueCar, Inc. works with a national network of nearly 5,000 Certified Dealers that provide up-front, no-haggle, competitive pricing to assist some of the nation’s largest and most well respected membership and service organizations to meet the auto buying needs of their members and customers. These partnerships include American Express, AAA, USAA and more than 60 others. Collectively these audiences represent over 1M in-market customers each month. TrueCar, Inc. is headquartered in Santa Monica, CA and has offices in San Francisco. The company was founded in 2005 and has been profitable since 2009. With nearly 200 percent year-over-year growth TrueCar has driven nearly 300,000 sales and is developing a suite of transaction oriented products and services centered on transparency and radical clarity as a result of comprehensively analyzing market data and information. You can follow TrueCar on Twitter and become a fan of TrueCar on Facebook.
