About GoAutoNews

GoAutoNews

Overview

GoAutoNews is the weekly trade newsletter of GoAutoMedia, the Melbourne-based independent automotive publishing company founded and owned by veteran motoring journalist John Mellor. Published continuously since 1999, it is the Australian motor industry's dedicated business bulletin: a weekly round-up of the news that matters to the people who make, import, sell, finance and repair cars in Australia, delivered by email and published online through the GoAuto website at goauto.com.au.

Where the consumer-facing GoAuto website reviews new models for car buyers, GoAutoNews is written for the industry itself. Its readers are dealer principals, franchise managers, manufacturer and distributor executives, fleet and finance professionals, and the suppliers who service the retail motor trade. A typical edition mixes the week's major business stories — franchise changes, dealership sales, executive appointments, sales results and market analysis — with shorter news items, commentary and links through to full stories on the GoAuto website. Alongside the free weekly newsletter sits GoAutoNews Premium, a subscription business publication launched in 2015 that adds deeper analysis, data and expert interpretation for industry subscribers.

History

GoAutoNews grew out of one of the longest-running independent publishing operations in Australian motoring media. John Mellor began his career as a cadet journalist at the Melbourne Herald in the 1960s, became a feature writer on The Sun in London soon after Rupert Murdoch acquired that paper, and later worked as a motoring and feature writer on The Herald in Melbourne before editing Motor Manual magazine. In 1979 he established his own company, John Mellor Pty Ltd — the business that trades today as GoAutoMedia — initially syndicating automotive editorial content to other publishers.

Through the 1980s the company expanded into publishing newsletters for the auto industry, an activity it dates from 1985, and worked closely with the motor industry newsletter Automotive Industry Matters. In 1990 Mellor founded the Automotive Business section of The Australian newspaper in a joint enterprise with News Limited, producing and directing a section that became required reading for car industry management and ran through the 1990s. In 1998 his newsroom team was appointed by Telstra to produce the automotive content for a new Yellow Pages online portal, an early move into digital publishing.

GoAuto.com.au and GoAutoNews were launched soon afterwards. In its 2020 submission to the ACCC, GoAutoMedia recorded that from 1999 the company has published what became the weekly GoAutoNews newsletter, together with the GoAuto consumer website of automotive news and reviews. The newsletter settled into the format it retains today: a weekly edition produced by the GoAuto newsroom, distributed free to industry subscribers and published as a downloadable document, with readers directed to goauto.com.au for full stories, new-model coverage and the site's extensive vehicle database.

The most significant development in the title's history came in February 2015, when GoAutoMedia announced a strategic alliance with Cox Enterprises of the United States, acting through Cox Automotive and its Australian auction business Manheim. The partnership backed the launch of GoAutoNews Premium, an expanded subscription service positioned as the business section of GoAutoNews, with additional journalists and analysts charged with explaining what the week's news meant for the trade. The free GoAutoNews newsletter continued alongside it, and both services remain part of the GoAutoMedia portfolio today.

Programming and Content

GoAutoNews is structured as a digest of the motor industry's business week. Its coverage, as set out by GoAutoMedia, spans motor retail news, trends and commentary; industry people, personnel changes and profiles; marketing and media developments; government regulation and industry lobbying; fleet management news and tools; dealership design and business innovation; vehicle finance and leasing; market trends; and the impact of technology on retailers and repairers. Editions also carry exclusive interviews with senior car industry leaders in Australia, New Zealand and overseas, and special business briefings on major industry developments.

Because the newsletter is produced by the same newsroom as goauto.com.au, its trade coverage sits alongside one of Australia's deepest consumer motoring databases. The GoAuto website publishes independent editorial reviews of new and used vehicles, first-look coverage of new model releases, motor show reporting, and detailed images, pricing and specification data on hundreds of vehicles — a new car diary on the site in October 2026, for example, tracked that month's Australian releases model by model. GoAutoNews items routinely link through to this material, making the newsletter both a bulletin in its own right and an index to the week's GoAuto journalism.

The Premium tier adds interpretation to the news flow: analysis pieces, expert commentary and data resources intended, in GoAutoMedia's words, to arm industry players "from the board rooms to the workshops" with information to perform their roles. The companion Premium website is designed as a reference archive — a searchable filing cabinet of industry information for subscribers preparing client work, research and business strategy.

Audience and Reach

GoAutoNews is aimed squarely at the professional motor trade rather than the general car-buying public. Its core audience comprises the management of Australia's franchised dealerships — from large multi-franchise, multi-branch groups to third-generation rural dealerships — together with manufacturer and importer executives, distributors, fleet operators, finance and insurance providers, and the many suppliers whose businesses depend on the retail motor industry.

GoAutoMedia describes itself as relied upon by the automotive industry in Australia as its prime news and information source, and notes that a large number of leading Australian motoring writers and industry journalists began their careers in the GoAuto newsroom over the past three decades and now hold senior editorial and management positions with major automotive publishing groups. In its 2020 ACCC submission, the company also explained the digital economics behind the consumer side of the business: more than half of GoAuto's monthly readers arrived via Google organic search, Google News and AMP pages, with the company earning its revenue from advertising and sponsorships. GoAutoNews itself is distributed free to subscribers as part of that model, with the Premium subscription tier providing an additional revenue stream. No independently audited circulation figure for the newsletter is published, and none is claimed here.

Digital Presence

The centre of the operation is goauto.com.au, which combines the consumer motoring site — news, reviews, future-model coverage and a searchable new and used car research database — with the trade publishing of GoAutoNews. Current and recent editions of GoAutoNews are published on the site as downloadable PDF documents, and the site carries a standing invitation to readers to catch up on the latest industry news with the current week's edition. GoAutoNews Premium operates from its own companion website at premium.goauto.com.au, where subscribers access the deeper business coverage, with email alerts supporting the weekly publication cycle. Subscriptions to the free newsletter are handled through GoAutoMedia's web presence, and the company also supplies automotive editorial content to other prominent Australian websites and print publications.

The site's currency demonstrates an active operation: when checked in October 2026, goauto.com.au was publishing new-model diaries and release coverage dated that month, and the GoAuto team page continued to promote the current week's GoAutoNews edition.

Ownership and Organisation

GoAutoNews is produced by GoAutoMedia, the trading name of John Mellor Pty Limited, an independent, Melbourne-based company originally founded in 1979 by its proprietor, John Mellor, who remains its owner and publisher. Mellor — described by his company as a leading and widely respected motor industry writer, analyst and commentator — maintains the editorial direction of a team of Australian motoring editors, journalists, graphic artists, designers and sub-editors. The GoAutoNews masthead has listed Terry Martin as editor and Tim Nicholson as managing editor, supported by a reporting team of specialist motoring journalists and production staff.

The company is a publisher in its own right and a content supplier to others: GoAutoMedia provides automotive industry and consumer news, reviews and vehicle data to some of Australia's most prominent websites and print publications. Its one major partnership, the 2015 strategic alliance with Cox Automotive and Manheim that funded GoAutoNews Premium, was a funding and development partnership; ownership of GoAutoMedia itself remained with Mellor's company.

Contact and Availability

GoAutoNews is available free by subscription, with editions delivered by email and published for download at goauto.com.au; GoAutoNews Premium is available by paid subscription through premium.goauto.com.au. The GoAutoNews masthead lists the GoAutoMedia newsroom on (03) 9598 6477, and the GoAuto team and author pages on goauto.com.au provide the main public point of contact with the newsroom. The business is based in Melbourne, Victoria.