Guest Blog

Nick Boles, the new skills minister, spearheaded a drive for apprentices across UK business and industry last week. The Get In. Go Far campaign is championing the value of apprenticeships for young people. It’s great to see government getting behind apprentices but, according to new research we’ve just commissioned, more needs to be done to make the automotive sector appealing ...

It has been a good year so far. The UK economy is returning to strength, business and consumer confidence has improved and 64-registration sales are expected to be at a decade high. We have also witnessed a new financial regulator coming into force, which has brought  a renewed  focus on customer protection. We are currently in a six month transition ...

While almost everyone would agree that the economy is in a much better state today than for many years, the after effects of the recession still mean that we live in oddly contradictory times. For example, during the last month, rival teams of experts have reported that UK consumer confidence is either rocketing or plummeting. The truth is that, at ...

For many years ASE has been focussed on using 13 key financial yardsticks as a quick way of analysing the health and profit opportunities within a dealership. This has given us a great overview of the financial health of the business and is now widely utilised by a number of dealers and brands to assess performance. However there is one ...

All the signs are that we are heading for another bumper September. But how many of the sales we’ll see reported will be to ‘real’ customers?  And how many stories will we see pouring cold water on the registration figures because they don’t all represent ‘genuine’ sales?  The fact is that a proportion – and nobody can really put a ...

The way UK motorists are buying cars is seeing unprecedented change. Flexible consumer credit arrangements such as PCP and HP have risen by 64.4%, since 2012

There are several key areas, especially in the workshop, where smaller dealers are struggling

Chris Green The market for used car advertising both offline and online is estimated to be worth around £300 million annually. A big focus for dealers is the investment in their own websites and digital infrastructure, to generate their own traffic...

Guy Ainsley Never mind the ups and downs of official statistics, to most people it feels like the UK has been in a five year recession...

It’s been a busy couple of weeks. I guess it’s the build-up of service and maintenance work that people put off while they go away over the summer.