mivox - 8:14 pm on May 15, 2002 (gmt 0)

The fact of the matter is that in the UK there are 2 very large car classified sites. In the US there is 1. Print publications are great but in terms of classifieds they are going downhill at an astonishing percentile.

One thing to consider on that count is geography. In the UK, a 100% online classified site is a much more practical proposition, IMO, because you're within a day's drive of almost anywhere in the country no matter where you start out. A nationwide, general classified site is therefore a reasonable idea, since the buyers and sellers are relatively close together. In the US, I'd say an equivalent concept is a statewide classified site...

In the US, I think you'd want to aim for a very tightly targeted collector's market if you were running a nationwide classified site. Dedicated collectors will go to great lengths to get what they want, even if the seller is 3000 miles away. For a nation-wide general auto classified site, the problem is that nobody cares HOW good the price is on that 95 Honda Civic if the advertiser is more than 1/2-a-day's drive away (or less in many cases), they won't buy it...

If I want to shop for "just-any-old-car", I'd pick up a local paper or check out the local paper's own website, rather than go to the jumbo national site where I have to drill down to my local area... Everyone locally has heard of the locally-based paper/website anyhow, so they're likely to have a better selection than the big site to begin with.