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Hyundai and Amazon Team Up to Offer Online Test Drive Booking

The world of online and the automotive industry have kept to themselves for much too long. While we have no problem buying anything that plugs into a wall socket over the internet, the cars have somehow managed to remain an off-line purchase.
2017 Hyundai Elantra 6 photos
Photo: Hyundai
2017 Hyundai Elantra2017 Hyundai Elantra2017 Hyundai Elantra2017 Hyundai Elantra2017 Hyundai Elantra
Sure, the price is a decisive factor - it's one thing to shell out $2,000 on a new notebook without seeing or touching it, and an entirely different one to spend 20 times that or more on the family's new vehicle. But it can't be just that. It hasn't kept people from buying the new generation of the model they owned even before it had made it into the dealerships, so there has to be a different explanation.

It's probably down to the experience itself. Buying a new car is a special occasion, so you want to mark it as such. You use the internet to come up with a short list, and then you take a day off, and you go to every dealership for a test drive.

You talk with the sales person, listen to their pitch, savor their attempts to draw you on their side: you're the man of the hour. You have the money and they want it, so they treat you like you're some sort of a sheik. Or they don't, in which case you scratch that car off the list and move on to the next.

Attempts at changing the way thing go have been made with cars selling (almost) entirely over the air, but they're still the exception. Now, Hyundai and Amazon are trying to go one step closer by allowing people to book a test drive online. Those interested will receive the car at the location they specified (at home, at work, in the middle of the desert) together with a "trained expert" who can answer every question the potential client might have.

The test drives can take up to an hour, and if the solicitant is interested, they will be directed towards the local dealership. So it's not much of an advancement in terms of online interactivity, but it's still better than the way things go right now. Unfortunately, the offer won't last forever. It's actually limited to the next weekend (August 27 and 28) and, to make matters even worse, it only applies to the Elantra model. Well, let's just hope that if everything goes well with this pilot project, we'll see more of it in the future.
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About the author: Vlad Mitrache
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"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie)
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