Cars.com is finally getting rid of the backseat driver.

Owner Tegna says it will spin off Chicago-based Cars.com as a public company next year.

Cars.com, which provides reviews of new vehicles and comparisons of competing models, was part of Classified Ventures, a joint venture of Gannett, Tribune and three other newspaper publishers, until two years ago when Gannett bought out its partners for $1.8 billion.

After the spinoff, Cars.com will remain in Chicago and will be run by Cars.com CEO Alex Vetter, according to a statement released today.

“It's great for them,” says Kayne Grau, a former Cars.com executive who now is CEO of Drivin, an e-commerce startup in the wholesale automotive space. “I think it opens the doors to make some strategic acquisitions and further consolidate the space. They still have an amazing product that caters to millions of cars shoppers each month. This can only help.”

Cars.com has the fifth-highest traffic among car-related websites, according to ComScore. AutoTrader is the leader.

The deal allows Cars.com, which has been under that control of various owners since it was founded in 1998, the chance to chart its own course.

Tegna also said it is exploring strategic alternatives such as sale of Chicago-based CareerBuilder, which is transitioning from a pure online-jobs site into a human-resources software provider. Tegna owns 53 percent of CareerBuilder, which also is partially owned by Tribune Media and McClatchy.

At the time of acquisition by Gannett, Classified Ventures employed about 1,300, including 800 in Chicago. Cars.com plans to move into a new headquarters at 300 S. Riverside Plaza next year.

Cars.com is just the latest of many spinoffs involving Chicago companies. Boards of directors have done breakups at Kraft, Sara Lee, Tribune and Motorola, betting that separating business units that have different growth rates or financial performance will lead to higher valuations from investors.

"Cars.com will have the flexibility to invest in further organic growth and to participate in the active digital automotive M&A market, and Tegna will have a strong balance sheet and cash flow to continue to pursue investment in organic growth and opportunistic acquisitions and to provide an optimal mix of capital returns to shareholders,” said Tegna CEO Gracia Martore, who announced she'll be retiring after the spinoff.

Martore hinted that Cars.com could be worth about $4 billion, Bloomberg reported.

Tegna was anticipating its broadcast media unit to show revenue growth in the high teens to 20 percent this year, with Cars.com increasing about 10 percent. However, the media business revenue is cyclical because of factors such as the impact of election years.

“It allows the company to better focus on creating value,” says Tim Loughran, a finance professor at the University of Notre Dame who studies IPOs and public companies. “Sometimes smaller companies are more nimble and able to react to opportunity than big companies. Spinning off companies also gives you greater transparency.”

Investors like it, too, he says, citing last year's breakup of eBay and PayPal (which owns Chicago-based credit-card software company Braintree). “(EBay's) stock went up 7.5 percent, even though the market had anticipated it.”

Tegna shares rose nearly 6 percent to $21.22 in late-morning trading on news of the Cars.com spinoff.