Surveys

Motor Trader’s legal expert Peter Groves thinks block exemption will come under pressure after the UK leaves the EU What is going to happen to the block exemption after the UK leaves the European Union? It will still apply in the EU27, of course, but will it still have the force of law in the UK after 29 March next ...

Demand for electric vehicles (EVs) in the retail market is growing. In August registrations of hybrid, plug-in hybrid and pure electric cars rose 88.7%, with the sector accounting for 8% of the market, its highest ever level. The number of pure electric cars now include the Nissan Leaf, Renault Zoe, BMW i3, Tesla S and X, Hyundai Ioniq Electric, VW ...

Alphera Financial Services is looking to gain support from dealers for the three Quality Assured Programmes (QAPs) it has developed with the IMI to foster high standards in the sale of finance and insurance (F&I) products. The QAPs are designed for F&I sales specialists and dealership business managers, providing a training platform to promote high standards. Participants who successfully complete ...

These are tough times in the motor trade. Half-year sales of new cars are down 6.3%, while diesel registrations fell by more than a quarter last month. It’s symptomatic of a rocky market. Uncertainty over Brexit is inevitably a factor, but so too is the headline-fuelled angst concerning diesel. Like so many business drivers whose daily motoring choice is a ...

Online finance tools are becoming increasingly important for used car dealers Used car retailing for some of the bigger players and small car specialists is doing quite well. According to dealer profitability specialist ASE the average UK motor retailer produced a strong performance in April, reflecting the upturn in the new car market and the continued strength in used car ...

Dealers have seen a surge in digital marketing over the past three years. Research carried out by CDK Global found that dealers are spending 64% of their marketing budget on digital tools, up from 45% in 2015. Some retailers, it said, were spending as much as 85%. A lot of this spend goes into online classified websites. The latest financials ...

Last year the newspapers were full of headlines on how the motor finance market was the next toxic shock set to hit banks and carmaker finance houses. The narrative went something like this. Dealers and finance houses were selling high value cars on Personal Contract Purchases (PCPs) using dodgy sales tactics and taking little or no account of the consumer’s ...

These are ambitious times for franchised dealer groups and large supermarkets, which are cranking up their used car operations to take advantage of a buoyant market. Pendragon is among those listed groups who have put more resources into their used car operations. It wants to double its used car revenues by 2021 and is intent on building a network of ...

It is often said that dealers are in the property business. And it’s true. Take Pendragon. By the close of 2017 it had £261.2m of land and property assets compared to £199.3m a year earlier. It also had property assets for sale of £11m. And during the last two years it has pumped £15.6m into buying property freeholds Vertu, too, ...

The Motor Trader Top 200 dealer groups turned in a record performance in 2017 with pre-tax profits up 9.9% to £1.07bn on turnover up 12.4% to a new high of £68.9bn. The average return on sales dipped from 1.3% to 1.24% during the year but the return on sales for the Top 25 dealer groups ranged from 2.1% to 5.8% ...