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Edmunds.com, Inc. was founded in 1966
for the purpose of publishing new and used automotive pricing guides to
assist automobile buyers
While consumers will always be our primary constituency, this year we have begun providing more data analysis to the automotive industry and its observers. Automakers, banks, Wall Street analysts and reporters are among those who appreciate our business-to-business information, including our True Cost of IncentivesSM report, which reports the total per vehicle costs to the vehicle manufacturers of their various incentives programs, including subvented interest rates and lease programs as well as cash rebates to consumers and dealers. Also of interest is the Edmunds Price Index for new vehicles, which reflects price shifts for the industry as a whole and can be analyzed by different market segmentation. More information about this kind of data, which is published monthly, is included in some of our latest press releases — available at http://www.edmunds.com/help/about/press/.
Edmunds.com continues to experience unprecedented success and growth, valued by both consumers and the automotive industry for providing useful, free and unbiased information on all aspects of buying, owning and selling cars and trucks.
Edmunds.com is a privately held company whose investors include the Peter Steinlauf family, CNET Networks, Inc., Cox Enterprises, Inc., GE Pension Trust, Rare Medium Group, Inc and Autologic Holdings plc.
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Edmunds.com continues to publish automotive guides today. Edmunds' New Cars & Trucks Buyer's Guide and Edmunds' Used Cars & Trucks Buyer's Guide are available in bookstores throughout the United States and Canada, as is our newest book, Edmunds.com Strategies for Smart Car Buyers. Our headquarters is located in Santa Monica, California and our sales office is in Troy, Michigan.
In 1994, before the World Wide Web had become mainstream, Edmunds.com's new car pricing data was first posted on the Internet through a "gopher site" that was known as 'The Electronic Newsstand." Edmunds.com was the first company to provide consumer automotive information on the Internet. From this humble beginning Edmunds.com has grown to its current size of over 800,000 pages of information accessed by over 200,000 people a day.
In early 1995, Edmunds.com launched its Web site, www.edmunds.com, the first automotive information Web site. Edmunds.com predates the advent of automobile manufacturer web sites and all other automotive destination sites.
Since then, we have been busy constantly updating our site's look and feel, improving the navigation, and supplementing the original pricing information with vast amounts of other automotive data, vehicle reviews, feature articles and videos. (Click here to see a history of the development of our home page and here to see what makes Edmunds.com different from other automotive Web sites.)
In 1997, we launched Edmunds.com's Town Hall, the world's largest on-line automotive community where thousands of individuals meet to discuss all things automotive. Our members currently post over 45,000 new messages a month!
In January 1998, Edmunds.com became the first automotive Web site to deliver its content to outer space. In response to a request made of NASA for interesting automotive information from Russian cosmonauts aboard the Mir spacecraft, we transferred our Web site content to a CD-ROM and delivered it to NASA, which in turn delivered it to the spacecraft. USA Today reported this event in its January 12, 1998 edition.
In 2000, Edmunds.com became the first source of vehicle information for users of wireless Web-enabled devices. The Edmunds2Go! service delivers prices, summary reviews, our dealer locator service and other information to cell phones and PDAs. Click here for more information about how you can access this service.
One of our proudest achievements was the development of Edmunds.com's suite of True Market Value® (TMV®) pricing tools, which launched in the fall of 2000. These tools consist of the Edmunds.com TMV® New Vehicle Calculator (which provides the estimated average price consumers are currently paying dealers for new vehicles), the Edmunds.com TMV® Used Vehicle Appraiser (which provides the estimated average price consumers are currently paying dealers for used vehicles, the price consumers are getting from dealers for their trade-ins, and the price consumers are paying each other in private party transactions), and the Edmunds.com TMV® Finance Rate Estimator (which provides consumers with both national and local average loan rates currently being offered by lenders for vehicles, as well as our estimate of which "credit tier" consumers will qualify for when applying for financing).
In 2001 and 2002, we introduced an assortment of new content, including the most useful and sophisticated set of automotive financial calculators available on the Internet; Edmunds.com's unique True Cost to OwnSM data, the only way to compare what new cars will truly cost over the full term of ownership; Edmunds.com's Consumer Ratings and Reviews, which now contains over 80,000 capsule car ratings and commentaries by our visitors; and Future Vehicles, our sneak peaks at upcoming models.
In 2003, visitors to our site have benefited from our efforts to improve navigation and enhance content. And visitors to NYTimes.com/autos, AOL’s auto channel and other major sites have undoubtedly noticed some of the Edmunds.com site syndication efforts and enjoyed Edmunds.com content there. Meanwhile, bookstores are stocking our newest book: Edmunds.com Strategies for Smart Car Buyers. Check it out at http://edmunds.com/books/index.html. |