CarsDirect.com Unveils Major Web Site Enhancements
LOS ANGELES--April 30, 2001--In its continuing quest to make online car buying faster, easier and more convenient, CarsDirect.com, a leading direct online automotive provider, today unveiled an updated version of its award-winning Web site, the third such upgrade since the company launched nearly two years ago.
The enhancements, which include the launch of a breakthrough finance decisioning engine, simplified customer navigation and faster page loading times, combine to significantly streamline the online car buying experience for the growing number of U.S. consumers who buy cars via the Internet. Unmatched by any other online car buying service, the CarsDirect.com finance decisioning engine provides customers with easy and simultaneous access to CarsDirect.com's premier lending partners and allows for instant financing approval by these financial institutions.
Additionally, CarsDirect.com has revamped the structure of the Web site, removing all frames to allow for full functionality of customer-friendly features such as the browser "back" button.
"As the pioneer in direct online car buying, CarsDirect.com is leveraging our history and our leadership position within the industry to upgrade our Web site to meet our customers' evolving needs and expectations," said Bob Brisco, CEO of CarsDirect.com. "While other companies still are in the process of building their online car buying platforms, we are tapping our unsurpassed experience and invaluable consumer feedback to make the online car buying process that much faster, easier and more convenient, with features -- like our finance decisioning engine -- that can't be found anywhere else."
Instant Pre-Approval of Best Financing Options
The new CarsDirect.com finance decisioning engine enables consumers to customize their loan or lease to get the lowest monthly payment, the best rate or lowest cash down payment -- whichever is most advantageous to the buyer's financial situation.
To develop the technology platform for the multi-lender loan and lease decisioning system, CarsDirect.com teamed up with Fair, Isaac(R) , a global provider of customer analytics and decision technology. CarsDirect.com's decisioning engine is based on Fair, Isaac's market-leading LiquidCredit(TM) offering, which delivers a high level of technology integration between each lender and CarsDirect.com. The technology enables CarsDirect.com to simplify and accelerate the loan or lease application and evaluation process.
After selecting the desired vehicle, CarsDirect.com's customers fill out a free, simple online credit application. Within seconds, CarsDirect.com uses the decisioning engine to qualify the customer and determine matching financing programs based on credit profile, geography, requested terms and the car desired. Once the most attractive program is selected, final approval can be secured in as little as 20 seconds.
About CarsDirect.com
Los Angeles-based CarsDirect.com is the leading multi-brand online car buying service, providing new automobiles and related products and services, such as loan and lease financing and in-demand aftermarket products including extended warranties. As the pioneer of the direct online car buying model, CarsDirect.com offers upfront pricing to consumers, who can research, price, order, purchase, insure and finance a vehicle online via an intuitive Web site that offers product information for nearly every make, model and style of new automobile available in the United States today. Shoppers can also simultaneously compare the specifications of competing vehicles.
In February 2001, CarsDirect.com acquired Greenlight.com, bringing four of the nation's largest automotive retailers -- UnitedAuto Group/Penske Automotive, Asbury Automotive, Hendrick Automotive Group, and Sonic Automotive -- under one online brand and increasing the number of priority dealers in CarsDirect.com's network to 3,000. CarsDirect.com also became the exclusive preferred partner for Amazon.com , enhancing the online car buying experience for Amazon's 29 million customers.
CarsDirect.com has received top awards and honors from Forbes Magazine, PC Computing, PC World, Time Digital, Yahoo! Internet Life and e-commerce authority, Gomez.