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Where Is The Dealer Uproar Over Cox Automotive?


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TO THE EDITOR:
From Steve Lindsay
Vice-President
Lindsay Automotive

COLUMBUS- OH - October 21, 2019: I am a bit concerned if dealers across the U.S. will sit back and continue to watch Cox Automotive infiltrate themselves even more in our businesses, so much so that they now want to completely bypass dealers and support electric vehicle startup Rivian, whose vehicles are preordered directly from the manufacturer.

For years, we have supported and helped build the Cox-owned Manheim auctions, Autotrader, KBB, Dealertrack, vAuto and VinSolutions, and now with their $350 million investment in Rivian, they want to compete directly against us dealers? Is this not the exact thing that we were up in arms about with Tesla, and now one of our partners is doing the same?

Imagine the data that Cox has on our dealerships and our customers. I hope that dealers and state dealer associations are wise to this and think about the impact of one of our partners competing against us.

Note from the owners of The Auto Channel: We hear you, Steve. No one should think that they can trust Cox. We thought that they were trustworthy and got really screwed by them, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. There is no justice without big money, none.