It’s not often that you hear about innovation in the used car space, but Mota Motors, a new site that’s launching today at TechCrunch50, has managed to pull it off. Mota’s multi-faceted service effectively holds your hand through the entire used car buying (or selling) process, offering a level of trust and convenience that has been difficult to achieve on traditional peer-to-peer car sales channels like CraigsList or Ebay. And with that trust comes some options that used car buys previously haven’t had: using Mota, you can elect to finance a used car — something that you’ve previously only been able to do through deanship used car lots, which typically charge a 20-30% markup.

Here’s how it works: Mota has a database of car listings from multiple used car sites, which you can browse through much as you would on a site like Autotrader. But rather than simply aggregating these listings, Mota adds a layer of intelligence to the process. Say, for example, you happen upon a sedan that you’re interested in purchasing. Mota will analyze the text of the car listing and suggest questions that you should probably ask the seller. If the listing only has one photo, Mota will likely suggest that you ask for a few more. If the car you’re looking at has a history of brake issues, it will suggest that you ask about the last time the brake pads were replaced, and so on.

The next thing Mota does is help establish trust in the deal. Through the service, car sellers can elect to have their cars inspected at an independent repair shop for around $75 to determine if there are any outstanding problems with the vehicle (Mota already has a national deal in place with PepBoys). From there, the seller and prospective buyer can determine who should pay for any necessary repairs. And this certified inspection also opens the doors to allowing finance and extended warranty companies, which historically have only been been able to offer their services to car dealerships, which perform their own inspections.

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Tags: autotrader, car dealerships, car listings, car lots, car sales, car sellers, car sites, car space, craigslist, ebay, extended warranty, independent repair, Innovation, necessary repairs, pepboys, warranty companies

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 at 1:05 pm and is filed under Automotive, Innovation, TechCrunch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.