James Cobb And Norman Mayersohn:

Two 20-somethings walked into a car dealership . . .

No, that really happened—this isn’t a setup for a joke. More than a quarter of the 16 million new-car purchases in the United States last year were made by that tech-savvy, marketing-averse group known as millennials, according to market-research firm J.D. Power. And virtually all those buyers ended up signing the paperwork and accepting the keys at an honest-to-goodness new-car dealership.

How could that be, in an age of painless online shopping, when you can buy everything from shoes to home mortgages via keystrokes, no trial fittings or handshakes required? Why can’t you read the review of a new model on Car and Driver’s website, click the “Buy It Now” button at the end of the article, and walk out to the driveway to await delivery by (large-capacity) Amazon drone?