Carvana Is Invading the $655 Billion New-Car Market — And Traditional Dealers Are ‘In an Uproar’

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Joshua Higginbotham swore off buying new cars from his local Jeep dealerships after spending entire days going back and forth on price. Then he used Carvana to buy a brand-new $51,000 Jeep Wrangler without leaving his Kansas City couch. He ordered it online from a Carvana dealership over 1,000 miles away in Arizona, paid $1,290 for shipping, and skipped the negotiation entirely, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Carvana has quietly spent over $160 million acquiring seven Stellantis dealerships in the past year, bringing its digital-first, no-haggle model to the new-car business. The results are impressive: its Casa Grande, Arizona, location, in the middle of the desert, went from selling 30-50 vehicles monthly to 350 — making it the top-selling Chrysler, Jeep, Ram, and Dodge dealer in America as of April.

“Stellantis dealers are in an uproar over this,” a Jeep-Ram dealer told WSJ. At a February closed-door meeting, tensions over Carvana’s expansion brought discussions to an abrupt close. The backlash prompted Stellantis to impose a new rule limiting dealers to one acquisition per year.