Scott Painter is at the helm of TrueCar, the company he co-founded in 2005, for the second time.

TrueCar was one of the original digital disruptors, offering partnered dealers new and used “leads” — essentially closed deals — and promising consumers an agreed-upon, market-based price calculated in real time.

The latter aspect would draw fire from partners and industry watchers who accused the company of using dealer data to drive prices down. Painter answered those charges publicly and privately and took steps to make TrueCar more dealer-friendly before he stepped down as CEO in 2015.

Months later, with a group of investors led by SoftBank, Painter launched Fair, an app-based, end-to-end sales and financing platform. Following numerous twists and turns, Fair purchased TrueCar in a $227 million, all-cash deal, and reinstalled Painter as CEO in October — 20 years after TrueCar’s launch and 10 years after his departure.

In an interview with Auto Dealer News, Painter says things will be different this time.

The New Car Department Store

First and foremost, TrueCar will focus entirely on new car leads. Last month, after meeting with each of TrueCar’s 400 employees, Painter’s leadership team reduced their workforce by 30% and curtailed three initiatives: the TrueCar+ digital sales and financing platform, TrueCar Marketing Solutions and TrueCar Wholesale Solutions.

“When I first came back to TrueCar, there was this real effort to get into digital retail, and it created a little bit of confusion,” Painter tells ADN. “Is TrueCar going to become a dealer? Do we have cars on the balance sheet?”

Painter wants dealers to know that is not the plan. He sees TrueCar as the industry’s only new vehicle department store. Its front-end configurator is stocked with 50 brands, 500 models and 5,000 trims, allowing for nearly 100 million permutations, offering a path to purchase for upper funnel (know what they need) and lower funnel (know what they want) shoppers, Painter says.

TrueCar claims 60% of its leads convert to a sale within a week, well above the industry-standard 8% to 12%. Painter says customers just want to know what a car is really worth. And he believes TrueCar’s 250-plus affinity partners — including credit unions as well as USAA, Uber and Sam’s Club, among other companies and groups — deliver goodwill along with intentionality.

“If we can help the dealer to not give away gross and sell the optimal number of cars, I mean, that’s nirvana, right there. So that is what we’re going to be focusing on. It’s not a race to the bottom, which is a discounted advertisement to everybody. It is offers of one that are representative of a good, fair deal.”

Onboard the Starship Enterprise

Asked what the future holds for lead generation, Painter says his long-term vision hasn’t changed since he presented it in a TED Talk-style presentation for factory executives at the 2011 World Economic Forum.

“I got up and asked, who knows who Captain Kirk is? Everybody raises their hand. And I said, just ask yourself, how would Captain Kirk buy a car? He’s in a galaxy far, far away. So he’s not going to be able to go down to the dealership. He’s going to say, ‘Computer, I need a car.’”

In other words, no device, no searching, no comparison shopping. The computer knows just about everything about Kirk, from his income to his driving record to his trade-in, and what it doesn’t know, he’ll tell it. By the time he returns to Earth, his next vehicle has been selected, purchased, taxed, titled, registered and insured. It’s waiting in the garage and his old vehicle is long gone.

As long as a dealership is in the computer’s orchestration layer, it’s in play for Captain Kirk’s deal.

“Now, that car had to get physically delivered. The trade had to be taken away. There is still a very, very big, real physical need for the dealer and the brick and mortar footprint and the ability to support that activity,” Painter says. “It does change a little bit about the front-end negotiation, but that’s where most of the negativity comes from in the car shopping experience. And again, the computer is going to be looking for a balanced outcome to make sure it works for everybody.”

Tariq Kamal is the publisher of Auto Dealer News, Dealer Agent News and AI Dealer News.