Car comparison site Carbuzz aims to ride slipstream of expert reviewers

A new independent car comparison website has launched in the UK hoping to take on much more established media in the car review space.

Founded by 23 year old “car enthusiast” James Hind, Carbuzz aggregates expert reviews and ratings, along with user reviews, statistics, and additional video and images, in order to help car buyers make their next purchase based on criteria such as budget, features and taste. The site currently houses around 8,000 reviews, each categorised by model and engine type.

Of note though, those expert reviews that the site is aggregating aren’t written for Carbuzz itself but instead are manually culled from established players such as Parkers, Fifth Gear, Autocar and What Car?. Excerpts and a link to each ‘expert’ review is included along with the car’s score from which an overall “buzzScore” is awarded.

It’s based on this manually compiled database of expert, along with user reviews, that Carbuzz is able to offer its main feature called the ‘Car Chooser’, which allows users to input details of what they want from a car, such as the number of seats and running costs, after which they are presented with a list of the best available matches. A nice complementary feature is ‘MyGarage’, which enables registered users to save a particular search or car for later reference.

Carbuzz is currently bootstrapped by Hind and is said to have “very low” operational costs, while the revenue stream will be mainly via affiliate marketing with price comparisons for new cars soon to be added, as well as car-leasing companies. Additional revenue will also come from display advertising.

In terms of competitors, however, Carbuzz does seem to be launching into a pretty competitive space with plenty of sites operated by publishing houses, such as Haymarket (What Car?, Autocar) Bauer (CAR magazine, Parker’s) and Dennis (AutoExpress, Evo). In fact, during CarBuzz’s public beta, Dennis Media launched a directly competitor, Carbuyer.co.uk, which also aims to help new car buyers through aggregating reviews.