Kelley Blue Book
an Irvine, California-based vehicle valuation and automotive research company
Kelley Blue Book Co., Inc. (KBB) is an American vehicle valuation and automotive research company. Based in Irvine, California, the company is owned by the Cox Automotive subsidiary of Cox Enterprises.
History
The company began as the Kelley Kar Company founded by Les Kelley in 1918. Kelley started the company with three Model T Fords. His younger brother, Buster, worked with Kelley as a lot boy. By using data collected from the dealership, Kelley published the company's first Blue Book in 1926, which became a standard guide in automotive trade in determining car value. Kelley Blue Book was formed in 1926, and the Kelley family continued its dealership business in Southern California for several decades. By the 1960s, the company moved from a car dealership to a specialty publisher and focused on the production of its automobile price guide. Kelley Blue Book guide became the first publication to use mileage to determine a car's value.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Kelley Blue Book” as an Irvine, California-based vehicle valuation and automotive research company. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as an Irvine, California-based vehicle valuation and automotive research company. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6385722. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1918 and 1926.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
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Three-step research path
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- Expand the search: follow Kelley Blue Book primary sources, Kelley Blue Book archive and Kelley research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
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Questions for further research
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This entry incorporates text from “Kelley Blue Book” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.