Carvana proved buyers wanted a no-salesperson experience. A Subaru store in Salt Lake City just proved that experience doesn't require walking away from the franchise model to build it.
Mark Miller Subaru launched Promise Path this weekend, a fully digital purchase journey built by GM Chris Hudson and his team on top of the dealership's existing one-price "Promise Price" model. The pitch, printed right on the site: keep the dealership, skip the salesperson.
The Journey, Step by Step
Choose — Pick from inventory or build a custom order
Price — Instant upfront pricing, no negotiation
Trade — A firm cash offer within three business hours, honored whether or not the customer buys
Credit & Documents — Credit application, license, insurance, a short federal form for cash buyers
Final Review — Accept the numbers based on approved credit
Delivery — Free within 50 miles, or pick up in-store
A 24/7 AI concierge named "No Sell Nell" is available the entire way through, and a customer can pull a human into the process at any point.
Want the full conversation?
🎙️ Listen to today's Automotive State of the Union episode for the complete discussion.
This Is Still Being Built in Public
The comment section on the original story caught something real: the site's "no account, no phone number, no pressure" promise ran headfirst into a purchase flow that asked for a phone number almost immediately. Hudson replied publicly within a day, confirmed the fix, and thanked the commenter for catching it. That's not a polished, buttoned-up launch. It's a live product still being tuned in real time, which is a more honest signal than a flawless rollout would have been.
Why This Isn't Really a Copy of Carvana
The read from Jamie Butters on today's show: sometimes you're the innovator, sometimes you're the fast follower, and the real question isn't whether Carvana's model works, Carvana already answered that. The question is whether it's replicable inside a franchised store. Mark Miller Subaru just supplied a real answer: yes, with 40 transactions already run through the system before the public launch even happened.
Paul raised the more interesting long-term question: if enough franchised dealers adopt this kind of tech, does it eventually push the industry toward call-center-style human support, the reverse of where everyone assumed AI-driven retail was headed?
The goal, in Hudson's own words, is to become "the UberEats of the franchised auto dealership."
That's a bigger ambition than one dealership's website redesign. Thirteen integrations today, aiming to consolidate into one system any dealership could adopt. Whether that consolidation happens is the thing worth watching next, not whether the no-salesperson experience works. It clearly already does.
