From the Editor

It’s starting to look like the challenges of 2020 may have been the dress rehearsal for the second half of 2021, but we certainly made hay while the sun shone for the first half of the year.

I’m pleased to confirm that CarsGuide has maintained our position as Australia’s leading online source* for automotive editorial for Q2 2021, and our audience’s appetite for quality automotive news, reviews, advice and videos continues to grow.

Overall traffic has increased by seven per cent compared to the same period in 2020, with ongoing development of our news product being a key contributor.

We announced the introduction of EVGuide last issue, and this investment plus booming consumer interest has seen traffic to our EV content increase five-fold in the second quarter of 2021.

Our EVGuide lead, Tom White, has been working harder than ever to make this happen, but I’m particularly proud of the world-first comparison test between the Toyota Mirai and Hyundai Nexo hydrogen fuel-cell cars he undertook this quarter. Make sure you turn to Page 36 where Tom takes you behind the scenes of this epic achievement.

The Adevinta acquisition of our ‘eBay Classifieds Group’ parent company was completed at the end of June. This means we are now very fortunately part of the largest international online classifieds company in the world. Moving on to our 2021 Car of the Year plans, it is with great regret that due to the ongoing public health risk and related restrictions across our Sydney and Melbourne bases since July, we have decided to not go ahead with it this year. Our judges haven’t been able to assess all vehicles in contention, so we simply cannot do the award justice, this year.

Our broad range of editorial products means we are in a very fortunate position to be able to shift our team focus onto news and advice, which is a strategy that served us very well during the darkest times of 2020.

We’re also developing new products to help us continue to deliver value to our audience, and you can read more about the first of these on Page 33.

We created plenty of diamonds under the pressure of 2020, so we’re energised to do the same again.

As always though, we wouldn’t be able to do it without the ongoing support of our OEM partners. Thank you, from the whole CarsGuide team.

Malcolm Flynn Editor, CarsGuide