New York

THE car dealer - around for more than a century and viewed almost as negatively as members of the US Congress - looked like a ripe target for disruption when retailing moved online. Now that startups have tried and failed to beat the car salesman, many are taking a different route: catering to them.

After watching predecessors such as TrueCar Inc and Ford Motor Co stumble in their attempts to bring more Amazon-like e-commerce to car shopping, a new wave of vehicle finance upstarts has emerged. Rather than fight a dispersed and politically- connected dealer industry, they're bringing the US's 17,000 new-car dealers into the digital age, meaning consumers aren't going to be bypassing the dealership to buy new rides anytime soon.