A Vending Machine for Car Buyers

Carvana: Say goodbye to auto salesmen

By The Editors
November 16, 2015 9:00 am

Owning a car is the American dream. Buying one is anything but.

The faux pleasantries. The upselling. The paperwork. The bad coffee. It’s not a stretch to assume that no one will complain when those jobs are lost to robots — that, perhaps, car salesmen are too human.

Enter Carvana, an online used car dealership that deals its wheels via five-story car “vending machines” based outside of Atlanta and Nashville.

You pick your car online, searching through nine filters — make and model, style, color, year (2008-2014), price, what’s under the hood and all the bells and whistles. Your picks are saved in a folder and you can make comparisons using their 360-degree cameras and car-fact sheets.

Select a car and designate a pick-up. Then book a one-way ticket to Atlanta or Nashville and they’ll pick you up from the airport, give you $200 for the flight and take you to the vending machine. You’ll have a special coin to release your car from the mechanical conveyor belt.

Then you drive it home with the peace of mind that if something’s amiss, you have seven days to take it back no questions asked as well as a 100-day/4,189 mile bumper-to-bumper warranty.

Because a competitive marketplace? That’s the stuff of the dream, too.

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