Blogs

This year has had its own challenges, used car values increased, substantially, in many cases and a shortage of good used cars made it difficult to restock. EV values have been hit hard and we decided to reduce the number of EV stock until the market volatility has been understood more fully. Full electric new car sales seem to be ...

As my first blog of 2024, then the first priority has to be to wish everyone a happy new year!  I managed to squeeze in a longer break, only returning to work on Monday, but I am sure that many of you share the feeling that it seems a long time since the holiday already.  For many, operationally, it’s back ...

It’s been a particularly hectic time running up to the holiday period, and this will be my last blog until somewhere around January 8th.  We all want to be busy, so I’m not complaining, but we also want to make sure that our efforts are productive – that we’re not being busy fools.  That neatly connects to a couple things ...

What are the three biggest drivers of change facing car dealers? The move towards EVs has to be up there. The arrival of Chinese brands, another. And the post-pandemic market, with falling used car values is also in with a good shout. EV first. Dealers have been investing a lot of time and money into their electric vehicle infrastructure and ...

A few months ago, I received a call from the National Protective Security Authority (NPSA), which is part of MI5, asking if there was a way that we could assist in improving business security generally, using the motor industry as a pilot the learnings from which could be rolled out across other sectors. Their mission is to build resilience to ...

In the course of the typical week, I have multiple conversations, meeting and presentations with different people from across the industry and sometimes it’s difficult to keep track of what you’ve discussed with whom, what’s ended up in different presentations and articles.  I had that feeling thinking about the blog topic for this week when I was sure that I ...

Again, my blog for this week is a bit late as amongst other things I have been supporting my colleague, Gareth Arnould, in the mammoth task of producing the latest version of our European Car Distribution Handbook. This has been published annually since 2007 and is the only publication that quantifies the size of manufacturer sales and service networks across ...

As the industry progresses towards omni-channel, primarily thinking of car sales, but also applicable to parts and increasingly services, the approach towards designing and implementing the digital channel is becoming increasingly outdated. Our consumer research shows that the vast majority of new and used car buyers make at least partial use of the online channels provided by manufacturers and dealers ...

The automotive industry has always been a remarkably resilient trade and we’ve seen this in abundance in 2023. Despite the cost of living crisis and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, both sales and prices have held up. However, as we enter the tail end of the year, we’re starting to see a downturn in activity. Car prices are stagnating and ...

Some dealer groups are being restricted by the number of used vehicles they are buying at auction after buying bans have been introduced to protect cashflow. Dealers have also been retailing fewer cars due to choosing to sell smaller numbers of retail stock at higher prices, despite wholesale prices falling in recent months. Based on forecourt stocking interest rates rising ...