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The Blind Leading the Blind: All Those Not Responsible for Automotive Innovation on the Internet to Meet at JD Powers Roundtable in Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS - October 6, 2008: In an event that's billed as the most important "ever" of it's kind, a group of Internet companies will get together at a JD Powers conference this week to discuss what's wrong with the automotive business and how more cars can be sold on or because of the Internet.

But what's really wrong is that none of the automotive participants are capable of offering any suggestions as to how to fix the industry and stimulate Internet-related business, at least that's the opinion of Marc J. Rauch, Exec. Vice President and Co-Publisher of TheAutoChannel.com, the Internet's most complete and comprehensive automotive information resource.

Says Rauch, "I looked down the list of auto-related Internet experts expected to attend and all I see are a bunch of people whose companies have pissed away untold millions to do nothing more than copy, emulate, re-hash and over-embellish the efforts of other online entities that have been responsibile for actually making things happen."

"It seems to me that you'd want to have real innovators and pioneers discussing the problem, not just people that know how to sign checks and spend investor's money," adds Rauch. "But then, why confuse quality with quantity in this time of governments' throwing trillions of dollars against problems that they can't define or know how to fix."

"To paraphrase the now well known Las Vegas slogan, 'this is really the one time that what happens in Vegas, should stay in Vegas," Rauch lammented.

Is this just a case of sour-grapes? That is the question that Rauch had to ask himself as he penned (or rather, typed out) this op-ed piece, since The Auto Channel wasn't even invited to participate. But then, Rauch was able to satisfy the question to himself with a definitive "NO," when he noted how many people from Auto Trader were making presentations.

For more information about the event, please visit JD Powers' Automotive Internet Roundtable website by CLICKING HERE.