Used Carfax Goes To New Second-Hand Buyer
Your Carfax data is going to new hands. IHS, the company that owns businesses from the defense publication Jane’s all the way to the not always reliable Global Insight, told Reuters that “it struck a deal to buy privately held R.L. Polk & Co, the owner of used-car history provider Carfax and a leading provider of auto industry data.”
Family-owned Polk has been for sale since March. According to a press release, “The $1.4 billion transaction will be funded with 10 percent equity and the remainder with cash on hand, cash from an existing revolver and a new bank term loan.”
(IHS should have a chat with Microsoft. Word’s auto correct, insists that it’s the godly HIS, not IHS.)
Bertel Schmitt comes back to journalism after taking a 35 year break in advertising and marketing. He ran and owned advertising agencies in Duesseldorf, Germany, and New York City. Volkswagen A.G. was Bertel's most important corporate account. Schmitt's advertising and marketing career touched many corners of the industry with a special focus on automotive products and services. Since 2004, he lives in Japan and China with his wife <a href="http://www.tomokoandbertel.com"> Tomoko </a>. Bertel Schmitt is a founding board member of the <a href="http://www.offshoresuperseries.com"> Offshore Super Series </a>, an American offshore powerboat racing organization. He is co-owner of the racing team Typhoon.
More by Bertel Schmitt
Comments
Join the conversation
I liked Carfax before they started overstepping their boundaries and providing information on common failure points, etc. My last car-selling effort resulted in more than one low-baller who wanted me to discount the car based on common failure points, even though the car had made it through the most likely failure window with no issues. It's artificial ammunition for uneducated borrowers. Please, Carfax, stick to accident and ownership history.
IHS is a godly acronym as well, see the below from Wikipedia: IHS may refer to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IHS A common Christogram based on the first three letters of "Jesus" in Greek (Ίησους, in Greek capitals ΙΗΣΟΥΣ, or ΙΗϹΟΥϹ using lunate sigmas, semi-Latinized IHSOVS). Early Christians, persecuted in the Roman Empire, used the fish as their secret symbol to recognise another member of the Faithful. It is still used to-day and referred to the Fisherman but had a second significance: The Greek word for "fish" was "Ichthus". I: Iesus, Ch: Christus, Th: Theou (God , possessive), U: Uios pronounced with a "h" (son), S: Soter (redeemer or saviour). Thus "Fish" also stood for Jesus Christus Son of God the Saviour, abbreviated: IHS (Jesus the Son the Saviour).
Carfax is like a credit report on your car. There is lots of opportunity for error and misinterpretation of the "facts"
Mr. Polk sounds like a jerk in the quote they used. "What I had to tell my staff here [was] they need to be very proud of what they've been able to do. I can't take credit for the success that we've had. That's the people that work here," Stephen Polk said. "I think they should be proud of what they've done." So the staff that now have to fight a redundancy musical chairs get the "credit" and he gets 1.4 billion...