Editor’s Blog

We’re delighted to announce that Motor Trader has joined forces with the all-new 2016 London Motor Show, as its headline B2B media partner. In its new guise the annual event will offer dealers the opportunity to showcase (and sell!) their cars and services to the 35,000 visitors expected to attend between 5-8 May at the Battersea Park Evolution Centre. This ...

It’s genuinely sad to be reporting on Volkswagen Group’s emissions scandal. As trusted brands go Volkswagen’s previously untarnished reputation had been built upon decades of engineering excellence and the delivery of consistently desirable product. Indeed the halo effect has underpinned its ownership of both Skoda and Seat who have benefitted from dealers being able to sell the virtues of platforms, ...

By all accounts the September plate-change got off to a flying start with dealers sitting on strong order banks, showroom activity and test drives up in the last couple of months and a plethora of new models making their showroom debuts. A strong September is crucial to dealer profitability. Not only is it second biggest month of the year, accounting ...

Motor Trader editor Curtis Hutchinson reports on the magazine’s long term SEAT Leon X-PERIENCE SE Technology 2.0 TDI 150PS. <a href="https://www.motortrader.com/"

A behind the scenes look at Lookers’ £4m FordStore in Chelmsford, Essex. The site was one of the first to open in the UK with the Blue Oval’s new FordStore design and retails the brand’s complete car and van line-up. It also represents Mustang and Ford’s upmarket Vignale brand. “Alongside the best range of products Ford has ever had in ...

So, just three months after going into administration, Carcraft is back in business but this time under new ownership and as an online classified site. It’s good to welcome back a name that’s been around for over 60 years, although in recent times that brand had been tarnished by what its administrators Grant Thornton described as a “poor market reputation.” ...

Staff from Pendragon’s Stratestone division celebrated the launch of the latest high performance Mini with a special road trip, the John Cooper Works Outing. Starting from the group’s Mini showroom in Tyneside, the convoy made its way to Harrogate before picking up teams from Leeds, Hull, Doncaster, Chesterfield and Derby as they headed south to the Mini plant in Oxford. ...

Many thanks to everyone who joined us this month at the Grosvenor House Hotel for the 2015 Motor Trader Awards and congratulations to all our finalists and winners. This was the 25th anniversary of the awards and gave us an ideal opportunity to celebrate in style with a Formula 1 legend, pyrotechnics and a laser show to accompany a succession ...

We’re delighted to reveal the winners of the inaugural Motor Trader Rising Stars competition, held in association with Northridge Finance. We launched the search for the UK’s brightest new car retailing stars at the end of last year with a call to line managers to nominate members of staff who they felt had the potential to become the next generation ...

Final confirmation of the degree to which self-registrations are distorting the new car market has come from ASE and Glass’s. ASE’s latest monthly composites show how self-registrations impacted the March plate-change with profits in the month slipping 3.2% to £96,000. Importantly ASE said dealers sold approximately the same number of cars this March as they did in March 2014, yet ...