At Carvana, what’s old is old and what’s new is new.
The internet-age used car giant said this week it is cruising further into the sale of new vehicles, turning the Stellantis franchise dealership it owns in Dallas, Texas, into a test-drive center for shoppers on its e-commerce platform. It’s a possible preview of how the company aims to transform both itself and, possibly, the entire car-buying experience. Again.
The news out of Dallas is actually just Carvana’s latest step in expanding its e-commerce operations beyond used vehicles. The company has quietly spent the past couple of years buying a handful of strategically placed Stellantis dealerships across the country, effectively using them as regional distribution hubs for online (and exclusively online) sales of new cars. The Dallas location, one of seven across the US, will now go a step further, allowing customers to test-drive vehicles and providing a comfy setting for online car shopping.
So far, the Stellantis dealership model and new car foray is showing signs of success, offering the company another potential growth engine:
Brake Check: The pivot to new cars could help the company steer through the shifting economics of used car sales. Despite the publicity push, its shares fell more than 10% on Wednesday as it got caught up in rival CarMax’s share-price fender bender. CarMax reported first-quarter revenue on Wednesday that beat Wall Street’s expectations, but at the great expense of sinking profit margins; shares of CarMax fell 9%, dragging down peers.
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