Hyundai, Amazon Have A New Idea And They’re Not Afraid To Use It

For the second time this week, Hyundai and Amazon have teamed up to bring a better automotive experience to buyers and owners. This time it's a customer-tailored online test-drive plan.

Looking for something to do this weekend? Hyundai has a good idea; how about a test drive? It’s not just any test drive. It’s a first-to-market, on-line test drive of a new Hyundai Elantra. It only works if you’re in the Los Angeles/Orange County market of the automaker. If you’re anywhere else, you’ll just have to book a flight very quickly so you can get to the coffee shop or parking lot of your choice. And you’ll have to hurry, of course, because it starts Saturday and it ends Sunday (don’t worry, if you miss it, you can go again next week, but that’s it. Is it too much of a good thing? No one is saying.)

Test Drives Where You Want

If you are an Amazon Prime member, the program – “Prime Now. Drive Now” -- is available to you. The way it works is the height of simplicity. Go to www.amazon.com/primenowdrivenow and you may be on your way to a 2017 Elantra or Elantra Eco. Simply schedule the test drive and the location. It can be anywhere, your home, your kid’s treehouse, your mother-in-law’s place (great if you are buying and Elantra or Elantra Eco as a surprise), even the vacant lot across from the third ballfield on the left.

When the appointed time arrives, an expert will zip up in the site, and you begin your 45- to 60-minute test drive. If you like what you see, feel, drive and hear, the rest is easy. You go back a Hyundai dealer – yes, a dealer is involved (they usually are somewhere) – work out the kinks in the deal and then you shake hands or fist pump or chest bump or hug or whatever you feel like doing to show agreement. In your excitement, don’t forget to sign on the dotted line or arrange to pay for things. Imagine how silly you’ll feel if you waste all that good karma and fist pumping because you forgot to sign.

Why would you excited? How can a customer not be excited with a chance to get a car deal done quickly? How many times over the years have you gone car-shopping, thinking you have a handle on everything, supremely confident of getting in and out quickly with the deal of your life get in-and-out quickly with the deal of your life, only to find the wheels falling off your dream as you wait and wait? If you are like most people, the answer is simple: any time you go out car-shopping or buying. People would rather have a root canal without pain killer than go new-car dealership unless they absolutely have to. “Prime Now. Drive Now” is the perfect answer to this industry-wide problem.

”A Tailored Test-Drive Experience”

A first for the industry and Hyundai, Dean Evans, Hyundai Motor’s marketing chief, is “excited to be the first to team up with Amazon to give customers a tailored test-drive experience.” Evans knows that people “are looking for a new way to experience our vehicles, and with the convenience of Amazon’s Prime Now service” the automaker hopes to modernize the “automotive shopping experience.”

This is Hyundai’s and Amazon’s second major announcement this week. Yesterday, they announced an agreement where Amazon’s Alexa, the online secretary service, will, using Bluetooth-enable Echo, Echo Tap and Tap speakers, be able to tell luxury Genesis 80 and 90 models what to do. It is part of the automaker’s new effort to forge partnerships with technology firms.