Walmart is expanding their partnership with CarSaver to start selling cars at more locations on April 1st. Which sounds kind of like it should be an April Fool’s Day joke, but is actually true.
According to Automotive News, after picking up your groceries, you’ll be able to head over to one of the CarSaver kiosks tucked in next to a hair salon or a nail center and browse through your options with a little help from a CarSaver representative who will guide you through your new, used, or certified pre-owned options, alongside financing and insurance. And a few minutes later, you’ll have an appointment set up at a dealership within a 20 minute drive of your Walmart.
The partnership technically started in 2016 in Stuart, Florida, where a single store partnered with 20 dealerships to offer an at-your-fingertips sales service to Walmart customers. This year, they’re expanding to over 250 stores, but the first four will be located in Dallas, Houston, Phoenix, and Oklahoma City. The goal is to sell 1,000 vehicles at each store every year.
This deal might be good for consumers as well. CarSaver CEO Sean Wolfington claims that people who buy their cars through Walmart’s service have been saving more than $3,000 off the sticker price without having to go through all that painful in-person haggling. (Except, probably not.) Still, buying a car at Walmart will never be the sexiest proposition.
It also may not be great for dealerships. Plenty of people complain about higher prices at dealerships, but local sellers have been struggling as more and more people turn to websites or third-party dealers to strike a deal. And dealers probably won’t be loving the fact that Walmart, which infamously destroyed many an American small business, now has their eye on the consumer car market as well.
That’s because, if all things go according to plan, Walmart intends to have a CarSaver kiosk offered at just about every one of its locations in the country, making them the only store where you can furnish your home, stock up on groceries, clothe a family, and buy a car within the span of a half hour. That’s efficiency.