Call me a visionary, but here's where I believe things will transition to by 2039.
On the Variable Operations side:
Dealers will begin to transition away from heavily commissioned sales staff. Replacing high commission with a high hourly rate, promoting pressure-less sales environments. Where customers may concentrate on their purchase, not having to defend themselves from sales sharks. Vehicular purchases will be made more digitally available.... However, I don't see transactions happening strictly online YET.
People will always need to test drive vehicles - so until we can emulate the entire car buying process, from the showcase to the test drive, things will most likely stay offline.
On the Fixed Operations side:
As technological and mechanical milestones are made, cars will begin to last marginally longer, and servicing them will likely happen at longer intervals. Cause and effect, I'm certain the prolonging of a vehicles lifespan will increase the price of parts and service, normalizing the total margins made from servicing vehicles.
Dealers will likely transition to pickup and delivery services for vehicle maintenance and repairs, for those opted into said programs.
Maybe even structuring maintenance into a small monthly package...?
On the Vendor Side:
Advertisers will take things completely social. Augmented reality advertisements will become more prevalent, emulating Point-of-View driving experience, and showing in life size what a vehicle would look like in your own driveway.
Vendors will concentrate on tracking a prospect, from Lead to Close. And will be more focused in on things closer to the end of a sales cycle, than things that initiate it. Like the generation of an Appointment versus the generation of a Lead.
