Through a massive acquisition announced Tuesday, Cars.com will be entering the digital remarketing and wholesale vehicle acquisition space, as well as the consumer peer-to-peer market.

Cars.com has agreed to buy the Accu-Trade group that incudes Accu-Trade, Galves Market Data and MADE Logistics for $65 million cash.

The purchase would also include potentially more cash and stock consideration based on financial thresholds. The company expects the deal to close in roughly 30 days.

Among other perks, the purchase gives CARS the technology needed to facilitate digital wholesale transactions on its platform.

“We are excited to enter into the rapidly growing multi-billion-dollar digital vehicle acquisition and remarketing category with Accu-Trade’s best-in-class valuation and appraisal technology,” CARS chief executive officer Alex Vetter said in a news release.

“These solutions will drive better inventory management and maximize profits for dealers while introducing a more efficient option for buying and selling wholesale inventory at scale,” Vetter said.

“We will also empower millions of consumers to confidently and securely sell their vehicles online to the best buyer,” he said. “This acquisition is a further acceleration of our platform strategy and will fuel our end-to-end transaction capabilities for buyers and sellers as well as long-term growth for CARS.”

Dealers will be able to use the CARS platform to buy and sell inventory at scale through both a dealer-to-dealer network and a consumer-to-dealer network. They will also be able to tap into instant guaranteed offer solutions throughout the CARS properties, including the Cars.com marketplace and on websites built by Dealer Inspire.

Dealers will also be able to source used inventory from consumers through the CARS platform via Accu-Trade’s proprietary VIN-specific valuation and appraisal technology.

CARS plans to debut “sell-it-yourself” capabilities for consumers on its marketplace, where private-party sellers can choose to sell to another consumer or a dealer. CARS expects the technology to be integrated with the platform shortly after closing.

North American wholesaler and auto software entrepreneur Robert Hollenshead founded Accu-Trade in 2015. Accu-Trade chief technology officer Jeff Zamora will join CARS leadership team.

“CARS’ strong consumer audience and outstanding network of dealer customers, combined with its proven track record of delivering digital solutions, makes it the ideal match to drive wider adoption of the Accu-Trade platform,” Zamora said in a news release.

“As dealers look for new solutions to optimize inventories and further drive profitability in their businesses, we believe we can quickly scale these assets across the CARS dealer network. On behalf of the entire Accu-Trade team, we look forward to joining the CARS family to help accelerate innovative digital solutions for the auto retail space.”

The CARS extension into digital remarketing, wholesale acquisition and private-party segments would continue what has been a broad expansion of the company’s services in recent years. Cars.com has grown from the vehicle listings/marketplace arena into the dealer ratings and review space, dealer websites, digital retailing, fintech and beyond

The company expanded to the dealer ratings and review space in the summer of 2016 with the acquisition of DealerRater.

Then in February 2018, Cars.com. announced it was purchasing Dealer Inspire — which specializes in dealer websites, digital retailing and messaging platform products — and Launch Digital Marketing, which provides digital automotive marketing services.

In November, Cars.com signed a definitive agreement to buy CreditIQ, a fintech platform that provides instant online auto finance screening and approvals to facilitate online vehicle buying.

The Cars.com purchase also follows another major industry player entering the online wholesale space.

Just last week, CDK Global announced it has launched an online wholesale marketplace called CDK CarSource that is designed to connect dealers to used-car inventories from other dealers across the country.

CarGurus, which traditionally competes in the same marketplace space as Cars.com, edged into wholesale with its purchase of CarOffer, a deal that was completed in early 2021.

Incumbents like Cox Automotive — which owns Kelley Blue Book and Autotrader, rivals to Cars.com and CarGurus — along with KAR Global and Auction Edge are well-entrenched in the online wholesale space.

And once-upstarts ACV and EBlock are now publicly traded and making acquisitions of their own.