MT Interview

In January 2017 Sytner became the UK’s biggest group after acquiring the CarShop supermarket chain. CEO Darren Edwards spoke exclusively to Motor Trader about the deal and how the group is achieving record growth Sytner Group’s acquisition of CarShop in January was significant on many levels. Franchised groups, after all, do not buy independent car supermarket chains. While Sytner had ...

  This year Citroen will move to boost retail sales on the back of the C3 and accelerate the separation of the DS brand. We ask CEO Bek Hassan what this will mean to dealers When the National Franchised Dealers Association’s Dealer Attitude Survey was published last September Citroen was rated as the lowest performing brand in the UK by ...

Auto Trader consolidated its market-leading position in 2016 with a plethora of new products and services. We ask managing director Trevor Mather what’s next for 2017? Trevor Mather is a man on a mission. He has led Auto Trader for three and a half years and shows no sign of taking his foot off the pedal when it comes to ...

Rory Harvey took over as managing director and chairman of Vauxhall Motors 15 months ago. He had already carved out a long career at GM holding senior positions in the UK, including retail sales and aftersales director. He also served as managing director of Chevrolet. Under his leadership Vauxhall will move from having one of the oldest showroom line-ups to ...

Not many dealer bosses end up running car companies. Bill Parfitt, the former boss of Vauxhall made the transition, while Neil Williamson went from running Mercedes-Benz Retail to heading up Seat, before returning to retail as CEO of Jardine. In March David Peel joined that small group when he moved from running Peugeot Citroen Retail Group to become managing director ...

Kia’s on course for a record year, has excelled in the NFDA survey and has just opened a flagship site in west London It’s a good time to be a Kia dealer. The brand is riding high in the latest NFDA survey, UK registrations are on target for another record breaking year and the pipeline of new products shows no ...

  Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has had a run of success following the purchase of the two brands by Tata from Ford after the economic crash in 2008. The group has invested billions in new product which has already driven profitability for Land Rover dealers and is now expected to do the same for Jaguar retailers on the back of ...

Back in 2000 Langley Steinert and a small group of like-minded entrepreneurs had an idea for a new travel website and launched it from a room over a pizza parlour. In 2004 the TripAdvisor site was sold in a multi-million dollar deal, the figure was never disclosed, and is now the biggest travel website in the world with a $1.4bn ...

Motor Trader met up with Mike Hawes, chief executive of the SMMT, at the Automechanika Birmingham show this month to get his take on this new supply chain and aftermarket show, the booming new car market, proposed changes to the MoT with the first test after four instead of three years and how the car industry is dealing with the ...

It’s a curious time for the RAC. On the one hand it is pulling out all the stops to launch an HPI-challenging dealer provenance checking service, while on the other it has ended its high profile aspiration to challenge Auto Trader in the online classified market with its RAC Cars service). Back in February the motoring services giant ruffled a ...