Blogs

During the lockdown the UK Government granted a six-month MOT expiry extension for all vehicles with an MOT due between 30 March and 31 July 2020. This was a practical measure to enable social distancing during lockdown, but this will result in a higher than average demand for MOTs from September onwards. For dealers already processing a backlog of sales ...

Last week it was announcement that 80 of the 110 sites of Nationwide Accident Repair Services in the UK had been sold through a “pre-pack” administration to a subsidiary of Redde Northgate, best known as a major player in the fleet leasing market. “Pre-packs” are a financially efficient way of shedding liabilities, and keeping only the bits of business you ...

Autorola UK has appointed Brett Henderson and John Upson as national business development managers. Henderson has worked in used car auctions for the past 14 years and joins from Aston Barclay, while Upson has worked in the automotive sector for two decades both for OEMs and in the remarketing sector. He joins from FCA. Meanwhile Nick Wiseman has been appointed as ...

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) will ban discretionary commission models from 28 January 2021, giving the motor finance industry plenty to do between now and then to implement necessary changes. The industry still has many months to implement these changes, but dealers can treat the following points as priorities now: Make sure salespeople understand the need to properly disclose the ...

Cazoo was in the news again with its purchase of Imperial Car Supermarkets. There is a lot of interest in what it is doing, a lot of money behind it and curiosity to see whether it can deliver where so many have failed in the past. Cazoo has pitched itself as a disruptor coming into the used car market and ...

Alarm bells always ring at the news of banning practices that deliver profit – but the reality is that such moments also bring opportunity. So it is with the FCA’s recent announcement that discretionary commission models are to end in January 2021. However, despite the inconvenience to some dealers who make such models work to their advantage in the short ...

Few of the lessons that the motor finance sector learnt in the 2008 financial crash will apply to the process of recovering from the coronavirus crisis. There are almost no parallels between the two economic downturns and that the solutions that ultimately proved to be successful this time around would probably prove to be equally different. Many or even most ...

Over one third of new vehicle (35%) orders placed in 2020 have been electric or hybrid cars and vans according to Activa Contracts. With WLTP now a reality, companies and drivers have started to order new cars again. The true impact of the new system has become apparent with cars increasing by 20-30g/km, which has helped encourage drivers into a ...

The acquisition of Imperial Car Supermarkets in the UK by online used car start-up Cazoo is worth a close look. We know Imperial quite well, and Neil Smith, their Operations Director, spoke at our Autumn Meeting last year in Paris – pause to remember those happy days when we used to get together face to face. We also know something ...

The time has come for the Government to give a definitive bit of advice, to codify what the Prime Minister could only splutter when he said: “Instead of ‘stay at home if you can’ – I think we should now say, well, ‘go back to work if you can’.” The Prime Minister’s opinion on this matter was interesting but a ...