Starting today Drive.com.au will be the sales team for CarsGuide.  This is a distribution deal meaning that dealerships will now be able to have a single point of contact for both sites. This isn’t a merger in any sense, both Drive & CarsGuide will continue to operate as separate sites in a competitive environment, with their own editorial, marketing and technical teams.

What it does mean is that both sites will grow as dealers will now be listed on both sites. From the press release this morning:

"This initiative presents significant commercial benefits to new and used vehicle dealers, allowing them to reach potential buyers more easily across two national platforms," Jack Matthews, CEO, Fairfax Digital said. "The personalised account service and expanded offerings resulting from this agreement will streamline the marketing process for dealers."

"We are committed to providing quality leads to dealers from online car buyers across Australia. This agreement reflects our ongoing commitment to increase our customers’ operational efficiencies," he said.

Under this agreement Dealers will benefit by advertising their vehicles with the two largest media organisations in Australia. The combined reach of both platforms coupled with the experience and knowledge of the advertising needs of the motoring industry ensure an offering of immense value to Dealerships nationally.

Furthermore, Dealers will have one Account Manager dedicated to managing all online vehicle listings with both Drive.com.au and Carsguide.com.au.

I’m pretty sure this is an unprecedented move in the online classifieds space in Australia. It’s not just that Drive & CarsGuide are competitors in the online automotive space, but the parent companies - Fairfax & News Ltd. are the two major media competitors in Australia, and traditionally don’t co-operate.  It will be interesting to see how this develops over time.

You can see a video of the announcement here.

(Disclosure: I work for Drive.com.au.  I generally don’t post about work, but this is public news anyway.)

One of the joys of working for a media company is knowing that Media Watch is constantly breathing down your neck.  And they really do notice (or at least get told) everything.  Drive published a story last week about how the Ford family is debating whether or not to maintain their controlling share in the Ford Motor Co.  The article was sourced from The Age, but a very small  article summary was added at the top:

Some of Henry Ford’s ancestors are considering the sale of their shares in the struggling motor company.

It is good to see that the elderly are still respected at Ford.

[tags]Drive, Fairfax, Media Watch, Ford[/tags]

We’ve recently launched a new feature on Drive.com.au where you can write a review of a car you’ve owned.  Love your new RX8?  How about the old Kingswood?  Post your review on Drive.com.au and let the world know what you think of your car.

As an added bonus, until March 18 2007 every review published on the site can go into the draw for a Samsung 42” Plasma TV & Home Entertainment System.

So go add your’s now.  So far, the overwhelming majority of reviews have been positive, the lowest rating I can find is 2/5 and there’s only a couple of them.  Come on, where are all the lemon owners?  Surely there’s some bad cars out there. 

Australian motor racing legend Peter Brock has been killed in an accident while taking part in the Targa West rally in Western Australia, motor sport officials have confirmed. … West Australian police say a car competing in the Targa West rally crashed into a tree at Gidgegannup about 30 kilometres north-east of Perth about 12pm.

drive.com.au: Peter Brock killed in crash

Gidgegannup, a town I imagine very few people had ever head of, has suddenly been thrust into the news, and thanks to Google Maps, we can all see where it is too.

What a week. First Steve Irwin, then Peter Brock.  My deepest condolences to his family, this is going to hit everyone hard.  And can someone please put a gag in Germaine Greer’s mouth before she says something else stupid, like how car racing is a horrible polluting sport and the trees have taken their revenge.

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The recently released Drive blog has proven to be very popular, with each post garnering at least a dozen comments, with a few of them topping 50 comments. However, the recent release of Holden’s new VE Commodore was covered extensively by the Drive Editorial team & the post on the blog asking for people’s opinions on the new car has now topped 10001200 comments!

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I’m after any car/truck/bike/<insert other means of transport here> blogs that people know of. Obviously there is Autoblog & the Drive Blog, but I’m sure there must be others. I’m particularly interested in seeing what other Australian car blogs there are. Is you know of any blogs that fit this description, please let me know.

They don’t need to be ‘professional’ sites, just as long as they’re mostly to do with vehicles!

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