16 August 2005

Chevrolet, the new name for value in the UK car market and the global brand of the GM automotive family (selling the Matiz, Kalos, Lacetti and Tacuma model ranges) has today announced a major enhancement of its existing retailer locator service, as provided by Multimap. Europe's leading online mapping provider has developed functionality that enables web users to search for retailers by road distance, as opposed to distance "as the crow flies". The new functionality, known as "Manhattan distance," makes the search results delivered by Multimap's "Storefinder " service even more accurate, by taking into account road features, such as lakes, rivers and the coast, that might impact journey time.

Matthew Young, E-Commerce and CRM manager at Chevrolet said, "We pride ourselves in offering an extremely comprehensive service to our customers via our web site. Retailer location is for many the first action in the buying process so easy access is of paramount importance. While we continue to add new retailers to our business and reduce distance and journey times, accurate knowledge of the distance to the nearest location is of great benefit to potential customers."

Visitors to www.chevrolet.co.uk click on the "Retail Locator" link on the home page; select "sales retailers", "after sales centres", or "nearest location" from a drop-down list; and enter their postcode or place name. Multimap delivers the top four nearest dealerships to the address entered, in order of road distance, plus a link to further information, e.g., a detailed map with zoom in/out and pan N,S,E,W functionality, opening times, contact numbers and a link to the dealer's own web site.

Steve Frost, head of sales for Europe, Multimap said, "A substantial proportion of our 800-strong business client base is in the automotive sector, and we were delighted to work with Chevrolet UK to further improve the service we provide to it. Finding dealers by straight-line distance from the consumer's location has been the online mapping industry's standard approach, but it is not always ideal. The ‘Manhattan distance' enhancement is all about giving Chevrolet's customers better information."

He continued, "Product development at Multimap is very much market-led. We are constantly listening to the market and refining existing or developing new services accordingly. In fact, often by the time a client mentions a new requirement, not only have we already noticed a gap, but development of an appropriate service is well under way."

About Multimap

Multimap is Europe's leading provider of mapping and location-based services. The company delivers more online maps, point-to-point driving directions and geo-spatial ("where's my nearest?") searches to more companies than any other supplier in Europe. All services are offered on mobile, PDA, kiosk, and interactive TV platforms and in multiple languages.

The public website, www.multimap.com, provides a range of free, useful services to assist with everyday life. Key features include street-level maps of Europe, USA, Canada, New Zealand and Australia; road maps of the world; door-to-door travel directions; aerial photographs; links to location information; and services such as hotel, restaurant and entertainment booking. The public site attracts over 8.6 million unique users, registers more than 160 million page impressions every month, and is one of the top 10 most visited websites in the UK. Multimap recently featured in The Sunday Times Fast Track 100 league table of fastest-growing unquoted UK companies across all sectors.

About Chevrolet

Chevrolet is the global value brand of General Motors, the world's biggest car manufacturer. Chevrolet launched in Europe early in 2005 with a range of small and medium-sized family cars, ideally suited to European conditions. In the UK the company has partnerships with c90 retailers across the country and is already establishing itself as an extremely customer focussed operation.