Carvana has unveiled its plans for the seven physical dealerships in the United States it has purchased in recent months from Stellantis, which owns popular car brands like Jeep, Chrysler, Dodge and RAM.
The Tempe, Arizona-based company, known as one of the nation’s biggest online used car retailers, announced the launch of its first “Test Drive Center” in Dallas. Carvana has also said it will continue to operate the Stellantis dealerships it acquired as a franchisee of the company that makes some of the nation’s most iconic car brands.
Tom Taira, president of special projects at Carvana, said the Dallas Test Drive Center and Stellantis franchise dealerships are a natural evolution of Carvana’s customer-centric business model.
“Everything we’ve built at Carvana has been in service of giving customers more control and more confidence when buying a car,” Taira said in a statement. “Test Drive Center extends that to the in-person experience. Customers can explore, compare, and test drive on their own terms – and when they’re ready, they buy online, the Carvana way.”
Carvana previously reported in regulatory filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it purchased six dealerships from Stellantis for a total of $171 million in late 2025 and early 2026. The company also purchased a seventh Stellantis dealership in April, according to multiple published reports.
How Will Owning Physical Dealerships Change the Carvana Car-Buying Experience?
Carvana officials said the physical dealerships will enhance its online buying experience, not replace it. Brand cars at its franchise Stellantis dealerships are automatically added to its online database, and the Test Drive Center and other physical locations will allow drivers who prefer to test drive vehicles in person before buying to have that option.
“Test Drive Center is for the person who wants to spend a Saturday afternoon behind the wheel of a Wrangler just to see if it’s the right fit – no appointment, no obligation, just the experience of finding a car you love,” Taira said. “We wanted to create a space where that’s the whole point.”
What Is Carvana, and Where Does It Rank Among Online Car Dealers?
Carvana is one of the biggest U.S. online car retailers, competing with companies such as CarGurus, CarMax, Autotrader and DriveTime. It sold 596,641 cars in 2025 and celebrated selling its 4 millionth car in October 2024.
What Does Carvana’s Move to Buy Dealerships Mean for Car Buyers?
Carvana’s move to buy brick-and-mortar car dealerships from Stellantis could allow it to better compete with CarMax, which has both a large online presence and 261 physical dealerships in 41 states.
Opening more physical locations could be crucial to Carvana’s long-term success because only 30% of car buyers said they were interested in buying new cars completely online, according to a Cox Automotive study released in January 2026.
What Do Analysts Think About Carvana’s Move Into Physical Dealerships?
Erin Keating, an executive analyst for Cox Automotive, said the statistics explain why online retailers like Carvana are moving into brick-and-mortar sales.
“At the end of the day, the statistics show that most people want to be able to shop online, and they may be comfortable taking it to the point of getting a quote online, but they want to go to dealerships when it’s time to complete the sale,” she said. “Carvana has a certain used car business, but the new car business is a different breed.”
Chris Wood, vice president of automotive client strategy for LocaliQ Automotive, called Carvana’s new Dallas Test Drive Center “the underrated automotive story of 2026” and compared the strategy to Amazon opening its first bookstore: “The store isn’t the product. The network is.”
Wood noted that data from Carvana’s acquired stores shows vehicles selling into hundreds of ZIP codes nationally — with only about 13% of sales from its Casa Grande, Arizona, location staying inside the Phoenix market in May. “The more data I pull, the less these locations look like traditional dealerships competing for local market share and the more they look like inventory hubs feeding a national retail platform,” he said.
