DETROIT -- Internet car seller Autoweb.com said it will spend $20 million to buy a company that supplies information on new and used vehicles to a variety of Web sites.
Autoweb said it would buy the Automotive Information Center, a division of The Thomson Corp.'s Gale Group based in Westborough, Mass., for $16 million in cash and $4 million in stock. The deal must be approved by regulators.AIC has its own 30,000-page Web site for consumers looking for information from pricing to crash-test data on vehicles. It also supplies information to automobile manufacturers, media outlets and Internet portals such as Yahoo!, Excite, Lycos and Infoseek.
Dean DeBiase, Autoweb's chairman, CEO and president, said by buying AIC, Autoweb would bolster itself in a highly competitive market for online car buyers.
A spokeswoman for Autoweb said the deal would not affect deals AIC has with Autoweb competitors, such as Microsoft Corp.'s CarPoint site. Wayne Lilley, AIC's CEO and founder, will stay on as head of an independent division of Autoweb.