Motor Trader The award-winning and longest running UK magazine for car retailing professionals. Your first stop for News, Jobs and Reports for the motor industry.
It was a one off, an exceptional month. The September plate-change revealed just how difficult it was for some brands to get their vehicles compliant with the new WLTP rules that came into effect on 1 September.
August sales had been higher than expected and September was always going to be difficult for some brands while others showed significant increases.
Total car registrations fell 20% for the month and diesel fell 42%. Some dealers took a big hit in September and this will impact on their third quarter profits.
In the October issue of Motor Trader we interview Pendragon CEO Trevor Finn to see how the UK’s second largest dealer group is doing one year into the overhaul of the business, pushing hard on used car sales, making specific cuts in premium investment and exiting the USA.
The big move here is in used car sales and creation of 40 Car Stores. Significant, too, is the investment in four big refurbishment centres to industrialise the preparation of used cars. Do it quicker, cheaper, more efficiently and pump cars through the system for faster stock turn.
This is not new. The biggest supermarket groups have been doing similar things for some time. Sytner, when it bought Car Shop, was highly impressed by the way the cars were processed on an industrial scale, a scale of a different order.
Pendragon now has the capacity to process 80,000 used cars and this will grow further as it rolls out the Car Store network.
In the October issue of Motor Trader we also look at Block Exemption with MT’s legal expert Peter Groves hinting that after the dust has settled in 2022 the government may have a look at the issue again and see what it wants to do outside of EU influence.
He believes that there are plenty of people who think block exemption would be axed and does not give much for its chances of survival.
Finally, we are gearing up for the Motor Trader Summit 2018, which is taking place on Tuesday 20 November 2018 at the Edgbaston Stadium, Birmingham. This one-day event is free to attend for all car dealers and themed around Profitable digital marketing in 2019 with a series of best practice speaker sessions.