The used-car company that skipped showrooms is now building them, with toy trains, rubber turf, and zero commissioned salespeople.
Carvana, the used-car giant famous for its car vending machines, is redesigning the new-car dealership as a “playground.” Its remodeled Dallas store trades salespeople and paperwork for QR codes, rubber turf, and smartphone shopping. New cars stay tiny for now: about 2,200 of Carvana’s 67,000 listings.
Picture walking into a car dealership and the first thing you meet is not a salesperson in a polo shirt. It is a giant cube with four 10-foot screens that you control from your phone. Outside, the cars sit on rubber playground turf, a soccer goal parked next to the minivans, a faux racetrack laid out for the muscle cars. “Kind of like Disneyland,” is how Carvana’s chief creative officer describes it. The pitch is gone. The pressure is gone. So is the guy who used to “talk numbers” in the back cubicle.
What Happened
This week Carvana unveiled its concept for a new-car dealership built for smartphone shopping instead of paperwork and salespeople. At the remodeled Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep-Ram store in Dallas, customers sit in the cars, scan QR codes to order test drives, and complete the whole purchase on their own phones. The old sales cubicles, where finance managers once pushed extended warranties, now hold living-room furniture and a toddler table with a toy train.
“We’re not trying to sell cars here,” Tom Taira, Carvana’s president of special projects, told reporters. “We’re trying to present cars.”
The Backstory
Carvana built a brand on never owning a showroom. The eight-story glass vending machines were the whole point: buy online, skip the dealership ritual entirely. Then in February 2025 it started buying physical dealerships, and now owns seven, all selling Stellantis vehicles.
The catch is that new cars come with rules used cars never did. Automakers like Stellantis require new-car dealers to keep retail spaces to precise standards. A vending machine tower does not qualify. So Carvana had to design an actual store, and it refused to design a normal one.
The financial backdrop makes the experiment possible. After stoking bankruptcy fears in 2022, Carvana restructured its debt, turned profitable, and surged to a market cap around $76 billion. It sold nearly 600,000 used cars last year, up 43% from 2024, and the stock now trades at roughly 100 times its December 2022 low.
The Plan
The new cars are still a rounding error: about 2,200 of 67,000 listings as of this week. “At this stage, we do continue to think of this as a test,” Taira said. Carvana might copy the Dallas format across its six other stores, but only if buyers respond.
The mechanics are pure Carvana: online ordering, no-haggle pricing, interstate delivery, and a single nationwide price per vehicle with no wiggle room. The “sales advocates” who roam the playground do not work on commission. They answer questions and walk you through a purchase you complete yourself. You can read the full breakdown of how Carvana’s online machine actually makes money on its core business model, but the short version is that the store is a stage, not a sales floor.
The Business Model Angle
Here is the move worth stealing. When you enter a legacy industry, you do not have to inherit its cost structure or its rituals. You can acquire the license and the location, then run your own model inside the shell.
Look at where the money goes. Erin Kerrigan, who runs a dealership-advisory firm, points out that the genuinely innovative part is headcount: Carvana’s payroll per location is likely far below a traditional dealer’s. Old-school dealers spend roughly half their expenses on employee wages and commissions. Strip out the commissioned sales force and the finance-office upsell theater, and you have changed the unit economics of selling a car without changing the car. The building was never the constraint. The operating model was.
That is the pattern for founders: disruption is not always a new product. Sometimes it is taking an old product and refusing to sell it the old way.
The Risk
Now the honest counterpoint. The same person who keeps the dealers up at night thinks Carvana is quietly proving their case. Mike Stanton, president of the National Automobile Dealers Association, says Carvana’s online-and-deliver-anywhere approach scrambles a system where automakers judge dealers by sales in their geographic territory. Real friction, no question.
But Stanton’s sharper point is that Carvana built a store at all. “Most people don’t want to buy a new car entirely online,” he said. “They want to go into the store and test that product out and talk to a real human being.” His read: “They’re coming our way, and we also need to do a better job in the digital space.”
There is a deeper hole, too. Traditional dealers make serious money on parts and service, and that is where the customer relationship lives after the sale. Carvana’s locations have never had service departments. Own the transaction, rent the loyalty. Until Carvana answers who takes care of the car after the keys change hands, the playground is a beautiful front door with no back room.
Quick Questions
Is Carvana selling new cars now?
Yes, but barely. New cars are about 2,200 of its 67,000 listings, sold through seven Stellantis dealerships it has bought since February 2025. Taira openly calls it a test.
What is a Carvana “new-car playground”?
A redesigned dealership where you shop from your phone instead of a salesperson. A giant four-screen cube runs off your smartphone, cars sit on themed rubber turf outside, and QR codes order your test drives.
Are there still salespeople at Carvana dealerships?
Sort of. “Sales advocates” are on hand to answer questions, but they do not work on commission and you complete the purchase yourself on your own device.
How much is Carvana worth now?
Around $76 billion in market cap, after restructuring its debt and turning profitable following 2022 bankruptcy fears. It sold nearly 600,000 used cars last year, up 43% from 2024.
The Business Model Analyst Take
Carvana’s most interesting decision is not buying dealerships. It is refusing to run them like dealerships. The lesson for operators is that entering a legacy industry does not mean adopting its cost structure or its habits. Take the license, the location, and the brand access, then run your own model inside it. The open question is whether Carvana can own the moment of sale without owning the years of service that follow. In cars, that is where loyalty actually lives, and right now Carvana has built a gorgeous showroom for a relationship it has not yet figured out how to keep.
Source reporting: The Wall Street Journal.
