Amazon begins selling cars online, partnering with Fiat Chrysler to sell three models in Italy
Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (FCA) said it has teamed up with U.S. internet giant Amazon to start selling cars online at prices up to a third cheaper than available elsewhere.
Context & Ripple Effects
This 2016 pilot is the first data point in what became a decade-long arc: Amazon testing whether its marketplace can carry a purchase bigger than anything it had sold before. The deal put three Fiat Chrysler models on Amazon.it at prices up to a third below prevailing rates, making Amazon the storefront while FCA supplied the metal.
The same year, FCA was already courting tech platforms on another front — late-stage Alphabet talks over self-driving technology that produced Pacifica-based prototypes. The Italy experiment stayed quiet for years until Amazon formalized the playbook as Amazon Autos with Hyundai in the US, then broadened it to a five-brand lineup across 130+ cities.
First-order effects
- Italian buyers get transparent online pricing up to a third cheaper than elsewhere, undercutting the local dealer channel on FCA's own models.
- FCA gains a direct digital sales channel through Amazon, using discounting as the wedge to test demand outside franchise showrooms.
Second-order effects
- Italian dealers face price-transparency pressure on the very models they sell, forcing them to compete on service and delivery rather than information asymmetry.
- Other automakers watching the pilot must decide whether to join Amazon's marketplace early or cede the online-pricing benchmark to FCA — the dynamic that later drew Hyundai, Kia, Mazda, Subaru, and Chevrolet into Amazon Autos.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, new-car retail migrates from dealer-mediated negotiation to platform-listed pricing, with automakers treating Amazon as a distribution layer the way they once treated franchised networks — a shift the US rollout suggests is already underway rather than hypothetical.
The trend: Car retailing is moving from dealership lots to e-commerce platforms, with Amazon running small international pilots years before scaling a branded autos marketplace.