Step 1 of 5 · 2013–18

Started alone, as a consignment service

Shift was formed in 2013 and launched in 2014 as an online buyer and seller of used cars, funded by venture investors rather than a parent company SH1 SH6. It began as a consignment service: Shift sold a private owner's car for them, so it needed no inventory and no plants of its own. Co-founder George Arison says the model changed because most owners did not want to be the seller at all, and around October 2018 Shift began buying cars outright CVX-7.

Owning cars required what a parent company would otherwise have supplied. In September 2018 Shift signed a commercial agreement with Lithia, a large dealer group, and in October it took a $30 million credit line to finance vehicle purchases, with repayment guaranteed by Lithia SH1. Reconditioning, the inspection and repair that makes a used car ready to sell, was done by outside shops before Shift brought it in-house, still sending work out when volume ran high; Arison says outsourcing raised cost and quality problems CVX-7. With each piece built or borrowed in turn, a model built around people rather than plants was the natural way to sell.

Rivals Carvana was built inside DriveTime from 2012: DriveTime bought every loan it wrote through 2015, built and leased its reconditioning centers, and supplied most of its cars until late 2016 CV1 CVP-9.

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Step 2 of 5 · 2014–22

A test drive at the door, a loan from someone else

Shift answered the fear of buying a car unseen with a person. A buyer could book a test drive at home or work, and a Shift employee brought the car; the offer also carried a 150-plus-point inspection and a seven-day return guarantee SH6. In 2017 Arison named the on-demand test drive as the company's main edge CVX-8. By 2020 about 80% of sales involved a test drive, and 40–55% of drives ended in a sale CVX-7.

The service put labor and a car on the road before every sale. Arison says an average drive took about three hours, run by staff paid $15–20 an hour CVX-7. That cost grew with each sale in each market, so more volume meant more drivers and more hours, and did little to lower the cost per car.

Around the car Shift assembled other companies' services. It relied on third-party lenders to finance buyers and earned referral fees on the loans and protection products it sold, and it used independent carriers to move cars SH1. A shopper who prequalified for a loan could filter cars by budget, but the loan belonged to the lender SH1. Shift kept the fee and the margin on the car, so the car had to carry the business.

Rivals Carvana replaced the test drive with 360-degree photos and a seven-day return, showed loan terms on the page from DriveTime's credit models, ran its own haulers, and later sold the loans it wrote, $13.3 billion of them in 2025 CVP-1 CV1 CVX-2. Vroom also sent buyers to partner banks CVP-11.

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