How many of you own a car? How many of you love your car? Is your
personal identity expressed by your car?

For years, the Yahoo! Autos team has focused on helping car shoppers figure out which car to buy, how much to pay, and where to buy it. In working on this product every day, we know that researching and buying a car represents only a small fraction of your “automotive life” — the time you spend enjoying your car after you buy it dwarfs the few months that you invest in researching and buying your car.

As we thought about different ways to help people find, use, share, and expand their automotive knowledge, it was clear that we should broaden our site to serve people for whom cars are much more than transportation.

Today marks the beta launch of Yahoo! Autos Custom, a product for automotive enthusiasts - people who are crazy about their rides. If you’ve ever wanted to know how to fit twenty inch rims on your Honda, give your Charger a sick paint job or restore your ‘69 Porsche, check it out. See what others have done to their cars, connect with them, brag about what you’ve done, or just window shop.

In addition to connecting to other enthusiasts, we help you find additional information.

• Installer Search - We partnered with the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) to help you find local installers that can do modification work on your car. Find the top rated shops in your area, see pictures of their work, read user ratings and reviews, and get driving directions with embedded maps. This is the first time the SEMA database of installers has ever been available online.
• Car Enthusiast Search - We built a specialized search engine by crawling virtually all of the top car enthusiast sites to produce the most relevant search results for enthusiasts. Go right to the source of enthusiast sites. Try a search for “blazer” on our car search and compare that with web search and you’ll see much more relevant results for one than the other.

Just as our team aspires day-in and day-out to empower users to make informed automotive purchase decisions, we hope our new offering inspires you to modify your car, to connect with other automotive enthusiasts, and to turn your dream car into reality.

We’re just getting started in this space and hope that you will take a spin at Yahoo! Autos Custom. We look forward to your feedback!

Jerry De Soto

My Rides: Sticky Icky, Screwed & Chopped

Product Manager, Yahoo! Autos Custom

Evan Robinson

My Rides: Sheena

Technical Yahoo!, Yahoo! Autos Custom

Telly Chang

My Rides: Black Widow

Director of Marketing, Yahoo! Autos Custom