I like looking at cars for sale, both used and new. I tend to use a variety of devices, including my Macbook Air, Kindle Fire, and my iPad (V1). The iPad is great at night when lying in bed, but when it comes to using cars.com, man does it suck.
The basic problem is pretty simple – it is dog slow. Just loading the home page takes close to a minute. Most of that time is spent fetching makes and models. The call is made after the main page loads. I have not spent anytime trying to track down what the problem is, but it is pretty evident that it is caused by poor executing javascript.
I am pretty sure that this is iPad specific and probably has to do with Apple’s javascript engine. I have tried loading the same page on a Kindle Fire with no problem. I am sure a large part of that has to do with Silk.
Come on cars.com, recognize that more and more people are using tablet like devices. Make sure your sites are at least working, and ideally, optimized for the platform.