Bob Kelley, who reimagined his family’s Kelley Blue Book first as a nationwide source of information and then again as a pillar of the early consumer-oriented World Wide Web, died at his home in Indian Wells, California, on May 28. He was 96 years old.
Born to a Los Angeles Ford dealer family in 1927, Kelley graduated from high school in 1945 and, after attending pilot training at the University of New Mexico, returned to work at the dealership in used-car appraisal, which was a major part of the Kelley business model after several wartime years with no new-vehicle production. He also assumed responsibility for the Kelley Blue Book. Begun in 1926 as a list of prices Kelley Ford was willing to pay for trade-in vehicles, the “KBB” had already passed into broader use around Los Angeles as a general indicator of used-car values. Banks and competing dealerships were happy to avail themselves of the information, which, in turn, reinforced the position of Kelley Ford as not just the largest Ford dealership in the area but also a legitimate authority on pricing.
Under Bob Kelley’s stewardship, the KBB became significantly more detailed as Kelley learned which factors truly affected used-car value and which did not. Mileage and generalized condition rankings were the most important, of course, but even in the postwar era, certain equipment, such as an automatic transmission or air conditioning, could have a nontrivial effect on prices. To aid users of the book, the KBB also contained basic information on finding serial numbers and ensuring the presence of original equipment.
When Kelley Ford closed in 1962, KBB continued under the ownership of a competing dealer who retained Bob Kelley in the publisher role. By then, competitors like the “Red Book” by National Market Reports were doing business on a nationwide scale. Kelley responded by crunching more and more data. The closure of the dealership had little effect on confidence in the book. By the ’60s, the majority of its users had likely never set foot in California. They did, however, have confidence in Robert Kelley, whose book developed and maintained a reputation for accuracy.
By the 1980s, many of the dealerships that had relied on the KBB were using other publications, such as the National Automobile Dealers Association’s “Official Used Car Guide” or the Black Book, founded in 1955 to focus on wholesale used-car value as measured at auctions. Kelley’s response was to go to the consumer, who had long seen the KBB in the hands of dealership appraisers. You could buy the KBB at nearly any bookstore, and exasperated dealership personnel became accustomed to seeing it in the hands of their more informed customers. This had the salutary effect of forcing dealerships to keep buying the KBB, in large part because the aforementioned savvy shoppers had a tendency to bring in an older edition of the book, which usually had slightly higher values for the vehicles in question.
In 1995, with the help of his son Michael, who had joined the company 14 years earlier, Bob took an even more dramatic step, putting the Blue Book on the World Wide Web. Once again, he was ahead of the curve, and as a result, he built an enterprise valuable enough for Cox Enterprises, owners of the competing AutoTrader, to pay more than half a billion dollars to acquire it in 2010.
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Kelley was retired by then, having walked away from KBB in 2001, but relatives and friends indicated that his interest in automotive trends and data remained sharp and insightful. He is survived by his wife Wanda, his sister Debi Sullivan, his sons Michael and Mitchell, daughters Cynthia Shilling, Nancy Bracken, and Christine Vogelheim, 12 grandchildren, and 10 great-grandchildren. His name remains synonymous with valuation for used cars, new cars, motorcycles, RVs, and even vintage cars that fall outside the purview of the standard-issue KBB.
The power of Robert Kelley’s book was such that sales managers at dealerships often acquired the defensive habit of slapping the KBB on the table and declaring, “This book never bought or sold a car,” to their most stubborn customers. While that was strictly true from 1962 forward, the truth of the matter is that much of the used-car business followed Kelley’s intuition and opinions in a manner reminiscent of the chicken and egg. Did the book reflect reality, or was the market actually directed by what was between its flexible blue covers? Today, most customers expect to consult the internet before beginning the vehicle purchase process. Whether they know it or not, they are following in Robert Kelley’s deeply worn footsteps.
Jack Baruth was born in Brooklyn, New York, and lives in Ohio. He is a pro-am race car driver and a former columnist for Road and Track and Hagerty magazines who writes the Avoidable Contact Forever newsletter.
