5 Best WordPress Car Dealership Themes for Your Directory Website

They say, “First impression is the last impression”. Believe it or not, this concept often turns out to be true for a website. Meaning, you must impress your website visitors with a smart and tidy design when they land for the first time. You can do it effortlessly just by using a great theme. The same goes for if you are trying to create an automotive directory website or a car dealer listing website. However, selecting the perfect theme for your website may sound a little daunting.

That’s because you need to ensure that your theme supports the basic features of a directory or classified website. For example, you need to make sure that your theme lets you create a submission page,

But no worries! We are always out there to help you find your desired theme or the theme that you need for your website. We have taken months to test and conduct research to find out the best car dealership WordPress theme.

Must-have Features for a WordPress Car Dealer Theme

If you are to pick a WordPress car dealer theme, you need to make sure they are not only packed up with features but also scalable through extensions. Here are a few features to look at before you choose a car dealership WordPress theme:

• Free Version Availability: Whether the automobile WordPress theme you choose has a free, premium or freemium plan.

• Pricing Plans: How valuable is it? Does the pricing plan automobile directory theme really suit the needs of your automobile directory website?
• Support Duration: How long you will be receiving support? Does the support duration do justice to the price you are paying for?
• Mobile Apps Availability: There are more than 6.648 billion mobile phone users from around the globe. So, does the Automotive directory theme come up with a native mobile app for iOS or Android?
• Advanced Form Builder: Does it have any drag and drop based form builder to design and customize the pages you will be creating along the way? Does the theme support unlimited custom fields
• Multi Directory: Is the car WordPress theme have a multidirectory feature? For instance, you may start with listing only automotive vehicles at first. But as time goes by, you may change your mind to list automotive vehicle accessories like steering, exhausts, headlights, seats, car audio, etc.
• CSV Bulk Importer: It’s not unusual that you might have to switch to the new WordPress car listing theme, from the older solution. For this purpose, you must make sure that the new theme that choose supports the CSV bulk importer feature.
• Search with Advanced Filters: A great search option is like the key feature of your directory website. Why? It is the primary tool that your visitors will be using to find out their desired listing from the ocean of the listing. What is more important here is that you must
• Frontend Listing Submission and Management​: Does the theme allow the users to submit and manage their listings from the frontend in order to give them a cool appearance, unlike the dull and monotonous backend of WordPress dashboard? Frontend Listing Management is also important to stop any malicous login as you restrict the users from using the backend of your website.
• Exclusive Extensions: A scalable WordPress automobile directory theme comes up with a fleet of extensions as you will need them later when your website expands in terms of users and site visitors.
• Page Builder Support: These days almost all professional themes ship with the privilege of page builder support. For example, if you are an expert using page builders like Elementor, Oxygen Page Builder Support, or Gutenberg block editor, you need the page builder support.
• WooCommerce Plugin Compatibility​: In case your website is already using WooCommerce, you can use the default payment gateways of your purpose.
• Develop Booking System: It is an optional feature for a car directory website. But if you have the plan to create a multidirectory website, you may run a restaurant directory or a hotel booking website like Airbnb.
• Built-in Checkout and Popular Gateways: Your car WordPress theme must support multiple and popular payment gateways. You can ask yourself, “Does the car WordPress theme you are choosing support popular payment gateways like Stripe, PayPal, or Authorize.net?”.
• Earn Through Monetization: This is the most important aspect because without the monetization service, how will you be able to make money? So, make sure the WordPress car dealer theme you are going to choose has these features.
• Live Chat / Private Messaging: If you allow your site visitors to ask their queries directly to the listing owners, your automobile directory will be more engaging. So, check your for these services
• Ads Manager: Don’t limit yourself to the earnings from the listing owners. You can also maximize your revenue by placing third-party advertisements on the web pages.
• Social Login: Social login allows your users to log in and sign up without putting their credentials manually. They can log in and sign up with their Google and Facebook profile with just a single click. So, double-check the WordPress car dealer theme you are picking up if it is scalable with this service.
• WPML Support: WPML Support or WordPress Multilingual Support is important if you want to easily translate your directory plugin to any other language.
• RTL Support: RTL Support or Right to Left language support will be important if your users speak languages like Arabic, Hebrew, Pashto, Urdu, Sindhi, etc.
• Google reCaptcha: These days Google reCaptcha is imperative for a directory website to thwart spamming on your directory website.
• More premium features: More premium features include Face Detection, Google reCaptcha, mark as sold, listing FAQs, image gallery, listing slider and carousel, compare listings, WPML support, RTL support,
• Miscellaneous: You can also consider how many platforms the WordPress car dealer theme you are going to choose is integrated with.

Best Car Dealership WordPress Themes- Our Favorite 5 Picks

We have handpicked these themes based on their versatility, scalability, and usability. Still, carefully vet them before you pick one of them:

1. dCar

dCar is not only an aesthetically satisfying WordPress car dealer theme but also packed with a heap of features that you need to create a professional car directory website or classified listing car website online. It is a great theme in the sense that it supports most of the use cases we mentioned above.

The design has carefully been developed so that you can perfectly showcase cars by creating multi-directories. For example, you can create two car directories – one is “New Car Directory” and the other one is the “Used Car Directory”. Now, not only multiple manufacturers can list their new cars in the “New Car Directory” but also other visitors who want to sell their used cars in the “Used Car Directory”.

When you buy the theme, you will get a dedicated WordPress directory plugin called Directorist that will facilitate you to add any functionalities you can imagine. It is 100% mobile responsive and it is also integrated with Elementor, Oxygen Page Builder, Gutenberg Block Editor, MailChimp, BuddyBoss and so many more. The completely free core version has a drag-and-drop-based directory website builder to design and control the elements on different pages.

If you are looking for a customizable search tool, the theme has got you covered with its directory builder. It also comes with a premium native mobile app both for iOS and Android.

The theme will allow you to monetize your website in various ways such as Charge for listings, Featured listings, Rank Featured Listings, Paid Ads Placement, Claim Listings, Membership, Placing Affiliate Links and so many more. Worried about receiving payments? dCar also has integration with Stripe, PayPal, and Authorize.net together with a manual bank transfer system.

The theme ships with a slider, CSV export-import option, Easy Translation by WPML, and Loco Translate. So, if you are from a non-English speaking region, it will give you a headstart. Last but not least, RTL support makes the theme a complete package.

2. Automotive

Automotive is a great WordPress-based car dealer theme that can build any classified website for vehicles. You can get payments from the PayPal payment gateway for each of the cars your users’ lists. It’s a mobile responsive theme that can render high-quality images.

The Automotive theme is creative enough with its exclusive VIN Number Decoder feature. With this feature, the listing owners can submit their listings lightning-fast because they will only have to input the VIN number and the submission form will automatically be filled out.

Like dCar theme, you can translate the theme to any other language. It also comes with other features like a Craiglist code generator, multi-currency and metrics, and a handy Finance calculator that helps you save time.

Another benefit of the theme is that it has an automatic CSV export-import feature that allows you to schedule import inventory files, and many more.

Though the theme does not ship with as many page builders or a dedicated drag-and-drop builder as dCar does, you will get the visual page builder included in the package. On top of that, you can change the elements and styles with the default WordPress customizer. If you want this theme for your car directory website, you can consider this.

3. Classiads

Classiads is another great WordPress theme that enables you to create a car directory with great control. The theme has a good-looking frontend dashboard. It has unlimited design layouts with integration with popular page builders like Elementor and Visual Composer. It also includes an advanced search option and unlimited custom content fields.

The theme is easy to set up and you can use the demo importer to create your website faster. It also allows you to move ads to the top using features like Bump Up Ads, Featured Ads and sticky Ads option. It has an integration with WooCommerce and it lets you post from the frontend. As far as payment gateway is concerned, it has integration with PayPal, Stripe, and Authorize.net along with offline Bank transfers.

The users can also login via Social media from the front end, use subscription plans, and much more. The core features also include Revolution Slider, a bbPress integration, MailChimp integration, Google Maps integration & RTL Support & WPML integration.

4. Motors

Motors is another powerful theme aimed at building a motor car dealer website. It ships with 17 polished demos, listing maps, and an advanced Search option to give greater control to the website visitors. Motors also support the VIN decoder tool just like Automotive. Meaning you can let your users submit a listing faster with auto-populated field data.

It ships with a vehicle comparison tool and is integrated with popular platforms like MailChimp, PayPal, auto manager, Contact Form 7, WooCommerce, Revolution Slider, and WPML plugin.

In addition to that, it supports multicurrency, Craiglist Posting interface, built-in listing stats, 500+ useful theme options, a finance calculator, and many more. You will also get a grid and list layout to choose from.

They have a good reputation for great customer service so you can pick the theme without thinking twice.

5. AutoPro

The WordPress theme, AutoPro is solely focused on the vehicle and automobile industry. With that in mind, it serves all car agencies, repair stores, dealerships, and more. You can create visually appealing web pages as it has an integration with a popular page builder, WPBakery and it also includes the Revolution Slider. it also offers movable sidebars and unlimited color options. The theme is 100% mobile responsive and it supports full-width mode. Thus customizability won’t be an issue for the theme.

It includes some features and options like several financial aid props, test drives, special information requests, purchase budgets, and loan calculators. AutoPro is also integrated with Contact Form 7, WC Marketplace Compatible, and WC Vendors Compatible. The theme also supports automatic import with just a single click. As far as multilingual language compatibility is concerned, it is readily translatable. So, no worries if your users are non-native English speakers.

Wrapping Up

And that’s all! Pick a WordPress car dealer theme from here and reap the awards later. If you are still confused, let us know your questions in the comment section below. We will try our best to help you with an appropriate answer. If you are already using one of these themes, don’t forget to share your experience as well.