Mark Miller Subaru launches Carvana-style sister website

Editor’s note: This story has been updated.

If you build it, they will buy. That's the idea behind the latest creation from Chris Hudson and his team.

Hudson, general manager for Mark Miller Subaru in Salt Lake City, and his crew assembled a digital purchase path that removes the salesperson and puts the human in total control.

"Promise Path is the name of the journey,” Hudson told CDG News. "It’s the path the buyer walks from first click to keys-in-hand.”

Driving the news: Promise Path launched Saturday on the group’s main website (we’ll get back to that).

They call it the "keep the dealership, skip the salesperson" option.

If customers decide they want help, they can “pull the handle at any time” and get a human on board, Hudson said.

How it works: Buyers go to the page and click that “skip the salesperson” button.

Choose: Then, they can pick from inventory or build a custom order, with a personal concierge available to help if needed. And, yes, the AI concierge has a name. It’s “No Sell Nell,” and she is available 24/7, Hudson told us.
Pricing: Instant upfront pricing is offered, plus an instant cash offer on any trade-in and a full deal sheet covering cash, finance, and lease options.
Trade-in: A firm trade offer arrives within three business hours, redeemable whether or not the customer buys.
Credit and documents: Submit a credit application, driver's license, and insurance card; cash buyers also complete a short federally required form. This unlocks a final deal sheet based on approved credit.
Final review: Review and accept the final numbers based on approved credit.
Delivery: A delivery specialist brings the car (with paperwork and a walkthrough) to the customer's home or office, or the customer picks it up at the dealership, where any trade-in is collected at the same time.

Even a fully digital deal ends with a human handoff.

Hudson said they still run a delivery process to stay in compliance and to give customers a choice on how they will collect the vehicle.

(Deliveries within a 50-mile radius of the store are free; a fee applies for further out).

Between the lines: Their “Promise Price” strategy allows the process to work smoothly by eliminating price haggling, Hudson said.

Launched in 2015, Promise Price is a one-price model: A fixed, market-based price with no negotiation, paired with product specialists instead of salespeople, and no markup on interest rates (they sell at buy rate).
Regarding a Carvana comparison, Hudson said their model is kinda like the best of both worlds: A frictionless buying experience with the comfort of a dealership and its humans to help if needed.

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The $64K question: So how are they able to do this and say they're in compliance?

The Promise Path option exists as the primary message on the company's website, not the specific dealership sites. (They also own Mark Miller Subaru South Towne in Sandy, Utah.)

Hudson said promoting on the company site gives the team room to customize messaging that wouldn't otherwise be possible.

"If we were to try to do that on the Subaru sister sites, it would not have been as easy, because there's requirements for us to have different things on the websites," Hudson said. "With this group site, we can make it however we want it to look to market this new way to purchase a car."
The main site also hosts a separate AI tool: A chat widget that helps shoppers narrow down inventory before buying.
It was built in-house using an MCP, a custom knowledge base, and a system prompt. It lives on markmillersubaru.com.
Hudson noted people can feed it intel, such as if they have kids and a dog, so it can help match them with a vehicle.

Later this week, the chat widget, plus a "skip the salesperson" call-to-action button, will go on individual vehicle display pages on the Subaru sites.

That is allowed, Hudson said, but promoting it prominently on the main dealership sites is not.

Between the lines: For now, Promise Path runs on 13 total integrations, mixing internally built tools and processes with multiple third-party partners, including Roadster.

Hudson said the goal over time is for these pieces to consolidate into "one system that can integrate into any dealership" wanting to offer this kind of purchase experience.

What they're saying: Hudson, who spoke to CDG News this week about in-house AI tools, also has taken part in what he believes to be the first AI agent-to-AI-agent deal, which he discussed during a Daily Dealer Live show.

"There's no emotion, there's no heart; it's all parameters with the agent,” Hudson told host Sam D’Arc in March.
He described Promise Path as an effort to protect the emotional parts of car buying while stripping friction from everything in between.
"The invisible middle is what we are solving towards," Hudson said. "Working towards being the UberEats of the franchised auto dealership."

Odds and ends: About 40 transactions, including a blend of internal employee deals, select guests, and select internet leads, were processed before Promise Path went live this weekend.

While a human-less service experience is not yet available, the goal is to keep that side of things pain-free, too.
"We will still be their servicing dealer and offer a similar experience in service,” Hudson said. “We aren't quite to the human-less option in service, but we are completely transparent and remove the friction."

Looking ahead: Hudson said the process will keep evolving based on how people actually use it, particularly around F&I dealings.

Right now, every customer sees every F&I product. Hudson wants to start tracking which ones get picked, then use that data to guide future buyers, similar to how airline booking sites show what most other travelers chose.

""As time goes by, we're going to try to fine tune this," Hudson said. “One of the ways that we're going to do that is by adding a percentage of time that products get used. We're working with a couple of different companies to help us with the awareness and the value of the different F&I products."

At press time, three potential buyers were at different stages of the Promise Path journey.

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