Cars.com's New Channel Offers Car-Shopping Advice for Women, by Women

CHICAGO, June 4 /PRNewswire/ -- Cars.com today announced a new addition to its family of sites: Mother Proof. Launched in 2004 by mother and entrepreneur Kristin Varela, Mother Proof is dedicated to providing women -- particularly mothers -- with useful, entertaining new-car content created by women, for women. Motherproof.com will continue to operate as a separate website, and Cars.com will add Mother Proof as a featured channel to its site to offer female shoppers unbiased, practical new-car reviews and advice based on what's important to them as women and mothers.

"Cars.com recognized Mother Proof as the authority on women's car shopping and family car reviews, and we wanted to bring this unique perspective to our site visitors," said Patrick Olsen, managing editor of Cars.com. "The Mother Proof channel complements our existing resources, offering a key segment of car shoppers expert advice from mom-reviewers who have walked in their shoes and driven a car the same way they will."

As the fastest growing segment of automotive consumers, women purchase 53 percent of new cars and influence 85 percent of all car sales, yet their perspective has been underrepresented in traditional car reviews. Varela started Mother Proof after her own experience trying to find the right car for her growing family. She found that a short test drive and existing content didn't provide her with the information that was important to her. She wanted to know which vehicles were easiest to install child car seats and load children into, which ones had the most functional storage compartments and which ones were most comfortable for a woman to drive, but this information was not readily available. Today, Mother Proof fills the information void, providing vehicle recommendations from a woman's point of view.

"Since the launch of Mother Proof, we have raised the visibility of the female shopper and the issues that are important to this group of drivers," Varela said. "In addition to helping thousands of women and moms make vehicle decisions that are right for them and their families, we have helped to increase manufacturers' attention to the features and details that increase the safety, convenience and comfort of their automobiles for today's families. By joining Cars.com, we have an exciting opportunity to broaden the reach of Mother Proof, making our reviews and content more readily available to the millions of in-market car shoppers that visit Cars.com each month."

About Mother Proof:

Mother Proof(TM) (http://www.motherproof.com/) provides online car reviews and information aimed at the fastest growing segment of automotive consumers: women and mothers. The site was launched in 2004 by Kristin Varela, a young mother of two, when she was in need of a new car and couldn't find information that was important to her and her family. Now part of the Cars.com family, Mother Proof's team of mom-reviewers continues in a never-ending quest for the quintessential mom-mobile, searching for vehicles that make grocery shopping and preschool pickup just a little easier.

About Cars.com

Cars.com is the most comprehensive destination for those looking to buy or sell a new or used car. The site lists more than 2 million vehicles from 13,000 dealer customers, classified advertisers and private parties to offer the more than 9 million unique visitors who log on to the site each month the best selection of new and used cars online, as well as the content, tools and advice to support their shopping experience. Cars.com combines powerful inventory search tools and new-car configuration with pricing information, photo galleries, buying guides, side-by-side comparison tools, original editorial content and reviews to help millions of car shoppers connect with sellers each month.

Launched in June 1998, www.Cars.com is a division of Classified Ventures, LLC, (http://classifiedventures.com/), which is owned by leading media companies, including Belo (NYSE:BLC) , Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE:GCI) , The McClatchy Company (NYSE:MNI) , Tribune Company (NYSE:TRB) and The Washington Post Company (NYSE:WPO) .

Source: Cars.com