First note in the small print:

"1. All prices are Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price (MSRP). MSRP excludes destination and handling charges, tax, title, license and options. Dealer sets actual price."

Dealer sets actual price. So it's still sold via a dealership. What a crazy country with crazy laws.

But the dealers are there to protect consumers from mean old manufacturers!

/s

So they use Amazon as an ad space?

Looks like it. You can't even leave reviews or anything on the page. I'd be surprised if customers find it useful.

It's a dealer referral service.

Call me when I can do a one-click buy with car delivered to house, from Amazon.

carOrder.com spent ~$100m trying to bust the regulations that prevent this from happening. Spoiler: it failed.

http://wardsauto.com/news-amp-analysis/carordercom-calls-it-...

Some dealers deliver to home. I bought a car through TrueCar back-end (the front-end was my credit union who did the financing) with dealer delivering it, so sorta kinda possible.

Tesla has managed to get around these laws.

Tesla is selling direct. Amazon (like carOrder.com and others before them) is attempting to compete directly with the existing intermediaries. Different regulations.

I heard a story about a year ago of someone making a site online to see if this was viable. People ordered cars, and they would get them from the dealership and truck them to the house.

It wasn't a scalable implementation, but they were just trying to determine if a market even existed -- and it did.

I would imagine it's a huge market. Just imagine it- you go to a website, pick out a car you actually want, customize the features there, and then get an actual price. Now compare that to going to a dealer, selecting from what they have, and haggling over the price. Buying cars now is a painful experience.

It really isn't that bad if you're in an area with a few dealers. Call each and say "This is what I want, this is the price I know it can be sold at. I don't have time for other options, and if you try to sell me any or haggle on price I'll go somewhere else. When can you have this model with these options available for me to come pickup?" Took me five dealers and I had to drive 45 minutes to get the car from the non-asshole dealer. Easy!

> Took me five dealers and I had to drive 45 minutes to get the car

That's not bad when you compare it to car sales in the past, but really, it's far from optimal. If you read just what I quoted and replace "car" with any other product I'd say it's kind of ridiculous unless the product you're looking for has very specific options and is out of production.

Not that ridiculous. Too often, I'm faced in a shop with a choice between a large doohickey and a small doohickey and I really want a medium doohickey, and have to drive/phone/search a lot for it.

Laptops. So many different models, impossible to fine tune for on anywhere except Newegg, but their laptop prices are surprisingly high and you can't find the same model at BestBuy

Considering the potential savings, you could extend your search area to neighboring states if necessary and still get a good deal.

My last car buying experience was easy. I just called dealerships and told them what I was buying and when and had them bid against each other for my business.

Ended up getting a great price below invoice and only had to call six dealerships and visit one.

I can't imagine an online only dealership being able to compete on cost.

Why wasn't it scalable?

I don't believe the delivery cost was passed to the customer.

They also needed to send someone physically to the dealership to negotiate and get the vehicle. And get a truck there to drive the car where it was going. These costs aren't negligible and would need to be passed to the customer. I think the key one is actually going to the dealership to negotiate and get the vehicle.

Understood. They may have done well to bring a car broker onto their team who understood the market, and already had relationships with dealers in order to shortcut through these issues.

That's a great idea for startup, would require tons of capital though. Not to even mention fight the dinosaur model of car dealerships.

eBay Motors [1] is already doing that. Competitive prices via dealers.

[1]: http://www.ebay.com/sch/eBay-Motors-/6000/i.html?LH_BIN=1&_n...

Not quite 1 click, but we have had people purchase a used car in 13 minutes. Currently we are only in Atlanta, but we are working hard on expanding nationwide.

www.carvana.com

I think online car shopping has a huge potential to grow, especially considering most consumers dislike negotiating at dealerships. That's why Edmunds.com launched the "Price Promise" (http://www.edmunds.com/price-promise.html) that locks you into a price before you ever have to speak to a salesperson.

While we're on the topics of online car shopping, I work for Edmunds.com on the API team (docs here: http://developer.edmunds.com) and we provide all kinds of car data for use in your application (and it's completely free as compared to all of our competitors). Feel free to email me (mbock at edmunds dot com) or comment below if you have any questions.

I would agree it has a huge potential, however a lot of that potential will not be realized until there are regulatory changes with respect to car buying [0].

[0] http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/05/25/the-fight-for-...

No BMW in 94404 area code left? :)

There's 4 BMW dealerships within 20 miles of 94404: http://api.edmunds.com/v1/api/dealer?zipcode=94404&makeName=... (check the URL and add your own key).

Note: register for a free key here (http://developer.edmunds.com/) and then input it into the URL above.

{

   "status":"FORBIDDEN",

   "errorType":"AUTHENTICATION_ERROR",

   "message":"Developer Inactive",

   "moreInfoUrl":"http://developer.edmunds.com"

}

Sorry, see the note I added above about getting a free API key, then use that to make the call.

I really really wish someone takes the car dealer out as a mandatory part of the equation, I understand many people rely on them but there are people like me who may be better off doing all by themselves

Mentioned elsewhere in the discussion — Tesla is fighting to take the dealer out of the equation.

I was looking for a BuyWithOneClick button and Prime delivery, instant credit approval. It would be awesome to buy cars that way, too bad dealer laws are so screwed up in so many states.

I'll believe "amazon is selling cars" when:

* price listed on the website is "firm" and non-negotiable

* price on website is way below MSRP

* car comes with 2-day amazon prime delivery :)

* I can get most major models I would want

IMHO referrals back to a dealer are pointless.

from my perspective, the #1 reason shopping for cars sucks (compared to flat panel TV) is that you can't get a price without dealing with a dealer. and yes, even if you call the dealer a consultant. just an awkward conversation all around.

The #2 reason shopping for cars sucks is that unless you're an absolutely savage negotiator, you'll always be wondering whether you could have gotten a better price. the current trend of non-negotiable prices sold by consultants doesn't really change that, i assume it is a clever way to disarm prospective clients.

I'd forgotten I'd installed the XKCD substation extension (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6695895). "Amazon is selling Cats" is a much more shocking title.

Same here. I am committed, though. Not gonna change it.

I had a good laugh before I realized the extension was at work.

I blame the elf-lords in Washington.

Note the &tag, someone is making 4% off of this purchase.

Well, not just this purchase, but a percentage of all purchases from anybody who clicks on this link and checks out within two days (if this was the last affiliate code they clicked on).

This link will probably make the poster (or whoever they copied the URL from) a few thousand dollars.

Yep. That's roughly $500-$700. Does Amazon have a cap on aff fees?

Why would anyone ever take a dealer referral with the price quoted as MSRP? What good would that do you?

If you were otherwise already going to buy a Nissan Versa, you can now get a $1000 Amazon gift card thrown in for free. You're still buying from the same local dealer, you're still negotiating the price yourself, you just get this bonus for starting the transaction through Amazon.

Doesn't the dealer know you've got a $1k gift card on the line? Don't they factor that into the negotiation? Normally, the dealer has to compete on an even playing field against every other dealer within 40 miles.

Due to Dealership laws this will never truely happen that way it should :( Tesla has been fighting this crap tooth and nail. Maybe one day I can click and confirm a car online and have it delivered to my house at a specific day/time that is NOT a 10 hour window like most cable providers

I worked as an editor at an alt-weekly in 1999. It was a wildly profitable newspaper drunk on the idea that the internet was the future, and the path to the future would be paved with outrageously expensive website projects!

I'm reminded of an all-hands-on deck meeting we had on the loading dock (where trucks unloaded pallets of newspapers, hot of the presses) in which a middle-aged guy who had been promoted from account executive to something like webmaster announced "beginning tomorrow, our readers will be able to purchase a car on our website!".

I can assure you, nobody ever did. (Obviously Amazon is a whole different animal, and buying a car in person still sucks, so more power to them.)

If I knew what I wanted, had already test driven the car and Amazon offered it for less (No tax perhaps?), why wouldn't I get it from Amazon?

Off Topic: I see you appended the referral tag. Good luck grabbing the 4%-8% on it.

I was there when they did this a long time ago (circa 2000), I believe in conjunction with Greenlight.com - at the time it was a "cars" tab which was basically just third party storefront space. It didn't last as Greenlight (pardon the pun) ran out of gas.

But this certainly seems viable. Costco has a carbuying program that includes baked in discounts and single price point. It is an obvious disintermediation play with nearly-as-obvious existing regulatory complications and entrenched interests.

Actually if someone wanted to really sell cars online, they would need to find a state with super lax dealership regulations and then truck/ship the cars to the consumer. Effectively we could all be buying cars "from wyoming" or wherever.

What would it cost to ship cars to users? $500-1000/car? (across 48 stateS). carmax charges $500 transport fee if you order from a different location than your local one.

This is what Tesla is trying to do. Of course they are running into a lot of issues.

Prime eligible with $3.99 for 1-day?

No interest for 12 months with the Amazon store card!

I would love to see Amazon and Tesla and a few other companies challenge and disrupt the traditional dealership model.

i'll believe "amazon is actually selling cars" when i can get: free 2-day delivery of a car at a firm, non-negotiable price that is well below MSRP.

Can I get international delivery?

Is there free shipping as well?

click the button, typical lead-gen to a dealership

No, Nissan is selling cars on Amazon.

Actually that kind of listing can't be made without Amazon creating it. So it's a mixture of the two companies and most likely there was an exchange of advertising dollars involved.