.cars Domains: One of Three Automotive Extensions
.cars entered the root zone on 12 March 2015, and the IANA record names XYZ.COM LLC as the sponsoring organisation. The registry presents it not on its own but as one of three endings built for the motor trade: the plural, the singular and .auto. According to the nTLDstats page accessed on 11 August 2026, the zone holds 338 registrations, which leaves the pool of available names almost untouched.
Choosing among the three is easiest if you read the address out loud. The plural implies more than one vehicle and suits dealer groups, fleets, marketplaces and listing sites; the singular sits better on a page about a single model or campaign. Its sibling .car reports a similar count, so both remain small zones. You can weigh candidate names against each other through a domain name search.
.CARS Domain at a Glance
- Sponsoring organisation XYZ.COM LLC
- Root zone record 12 March 2015
- Eligibility condition No verified restriction
- Registered names 338 (nTLDstats, 11 August 2026)
- Endings in the same line .cars, .car and .auto — promoted together by the registry
- Document Requirement No documents are required to register a .cars domain
- Character Length 1 - 63 characters
- Registration Period 1 - 10 years
- Name Server Count 1 - 10 servers
.cars Domain Prices — No Surprise Fees
Registration, transfer and renewal fees are listed separately. The renewal price can differ from the first-year price, so you see both up front.
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New Registration
$2,500.00 /year -
Transfer
$2,599.99 /year -
Renewal
$2,799.99 /year -
Restore
$4,099.90 -
Late Renewal
$550.00
Included With Every .cars Domain
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Free DNS management
Change A, MX, TXT and CNAME records yourself from the panel — no waiting on anyone when you move a site or mailbox.
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Domain lock
While the lock is on, nobody can move your domain to another registrar without your approval.
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Domain forwarding
Point the domain at your existing site, a campaign page or a social profile — at no extra cost.
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Free WHOIS privacy
Your name, address and phone stay out of public WHOIS records, which cuts down spam and scam calls.
.cars Domain Lifecycle
What happens day by day after it expires
Day 0 is the domain's expiry dateIn short: your .cars domain is put on Client Hold on its expiry date, so the site and e-mail stop that same day. You can still renew during the first 20 days, but from this point a late renewal fee is added on top of the renewal price. On day 20 the registration is deleted and until day 50 only a paid restore brings it back. Nothing at all can be done in the 5 days that follow, and on day 55 the name is open to anyone. There is exactly one way never to enter this chain: keep auto-renewal on.
Domain Is Available (Available)
A .cars address at this stage has not been taken yet, and it goes to whoever registers first. Check the name you have in mind — if it is free, it can be yours within minutes.
Domain Is Active (Active Period)
Once registration is complete, the domain is registered to you for the term you selected. You can renew at any point before it expires to keep it active, or switch on auto-renewal so you never have to watch the date.
Renewal Window (Client Hold)
On its expiry date your .cars domain is put on Client Hold: the site and e-mail go down that day, but the registration is still yours. A single renewal within these first 20 days brings everything back exactly as it was — nothing is lost. The only difference is that a $550.00 late renewal fee is now added to the renewal price; renewing before the expiry date avoids that fee entirely.
Redemption Period (Redemption / RGP)
On day 20 the registration is deleted and the 30-day redemption period that ICANN requires of every gTLD registry begins. The name is not released to anyone during this time; only you can take it back, by paying the restore fee, until day 50. That fee is far higher than a renewal — renewing on time is always the cheaper route.
Pending Delete (Pending Delete)
Once the redemption window closes too, the domain enters its final 5 days and there is no way back. Neither renewal nor restore works here; nobody — your registrar included — can return the name to you. The registry uses this window as the last hold before the name goes back into the pool.
Open to Anyone Again (Released)
On day 55 the name .cars returns to the pool and anyone can register it. Sought-after names are often gone within seconds, and there is no guaranteed way to get one back. Yet staying out of this timeline is entirely in your hands: leave auto-renewal on and the expiry date will never catch you off guard.
The timeline above is the schedule Atak Domain applies and publishes. The ICANN chart you will find elsewhere shows a renewal window of up to 45 days after expiry; ICANN's policy on expired registrations (section 2.2.1) lets registrars delete an expired domain at any time, provided they disclose their policy in advance. We apply that window as 20 days and publish it here in plain sight. Full text of the policy: ICANN Expired Registration Recovery Policy
.cars Domain Specifications and Registration Rules
Registration conditions, supported features and the registry's own timelines in a single table.
.cars Domain Registration
- Document Requirement No documents are required to register a .cars domain
- Character Length 1 - 63 characters
- Registration Period 1 - 10 years
- Name Server Count 1 - 10 servers
.cars Domain Support
- IDN Support No
- Transfer Support Yes
- Late Renewal Support Yes
Frequently Asked Questions About .cars Domains
The questions people actually ask before registering — answered plainly.
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Read the address out loud and ask which sentence describes your business. The plural implies more than one vehicle, so dealer groups, fleets, listing sites and marketplaces sit naturally there. The singular fits a single model, a campaign or a one-car story. .auto gathers the whole trade, servicing and parts included, into one word. All three belong to the same registry line.
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The zone is genuinely small: the nTLDstats page accessed on 11 August 2026 lists 338 registrations. Two practical consequences follow. First, the root word you have in mind is likely to be free. Second, few visitors will have seen the ending before, so be ready to spell the address out when you say it on the phone. Weigh that where recognition matters to your work.
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No verified eligibility restriction could be found at the registry, and no document suggests that a licence, trade authorisation or dealer agreement is requested. Vehicle sales, used-car trading and motor finance are nevertheless registered and supervised activities in many countries. The domain satisfies none of those duties, and the authorisation for your activity still has to be obtained separately.
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Image weight and form security lead the list. Listing pages open with dozens of high-resolution photographs, and uncompressed images slow the page on a mobile connection until the visitor leaves before seeing the advert. The second item is the enquiry form: anything carrying a phone number and an address belongs on an encrypted connection. Install the certificate from the SSL certificate page.
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It makes sense in a multi-brand setup. If you run several dealerships or gather different marques under one roof, the plural puts that plurality in the address and keeps campaign pages apart from the main site. For a single-brand dealer, a section under the existing domain usually does the job. Sweep the free roots quickly with a bulk domain name search.
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The name does not go free at once. A renewal window runs first, then a redemption period, and recovering the name in those stages takes extra work. The risk is commercial rather than technical: if a listing site or campaign address goes dark even for hours, the links sitting in search results stop resolving. Put renewal on automatic and check once a year that your registrar holds a current email address.
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