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.
Welcome to the April issue of Motor Trader and welcome, too, to showrooms opening earlier this month with dealers working to cater for the pent-up demand for cars and services halted in the lockdown.
This time around we look at motor finance in our survey of 200 dealers. The new Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) finance rules have been in place for over two months now. How have dealers fared with the rules?
We carried out a survey of 200 dealers who read Motor Trader and asked them what had changed since the new rules came into play, the impact on profitability, the quality of service they received from their supplier and had they sought other income streams to compensate for any declines?
In Dealer Insight this month we check out Lookers Northallerton, which has been on the up over the past six years, becoming an award-winning Volkswagen dealership. Alan Lea, brand manager, talks to Motor Trader on instilling a customer first culture and building success. It is a great story for the dealership and for Lookers as a whole.
Last month, the IMI announced that it was commissioning a taskforce to investigate the automotive sector and see how it can increase the diversity of the workforce. It will be headed up by Jim Saker, director of the Centre for Automotive Management in the Business School at Loughborough University and a Professor of Retail Management. Saker will have a specific focus on the greater inclusion of under-represented groups in automotive. In this issue Saker and IMI CEO Steve Nash spell out some of the problems facing the sector.
This month we focus on the latest NFDA Dealer Attitude Survey to see which franchises are top of the charts and those who are struggling. It covers a lot of ground, including the pandemic. Dealers were asked how satisfied they were with the level of manufacturer support throughout the COVID-19 crisis? Average dealers’ satisfaction levels with the support they received throughout the COVID-19 crisis remained relatively high at 6.4 out of 10 points, the same as last time.
The UK Government has announced that it will be cutting the Plug-in grant by £500 to £2,500. It said that this change will mean that funding will last longer and be available to more drivers. It also argued that grants will no longer be available for higher-priced vehicles. When dealers are investing heavily in electric cars, the timing could not have been worse.