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.
Dealers are investing more in their websites and digital marketing to improve their used car offer, boost the numbers of cars they sell and improve stock turn and profitability.
In the November issue of Motor Trader we take our annual look at the operations of the Top 50 Independent Dealers in the UK who have turned in record performances in terms of turnover, profitability and throughput.
Top 50 total turnover is up 16.1% to £5.1bn. Profitability is up, too, with the return on sales rising from 2.9% last time to 3.2% in 2018. And businesses are getting bigger.
To get into the Top 50 you now have to have a turnover of £22m. Two years it was just £10m. That’s a big shift.
And it is not just independents. Franchised dealers have improved their offer in used cars and this has gone straight to the bottom line.
Lookers turned in a solid used car performance in the nine months to September. Used cars values remained stable over this period and made a 27% gross profit contribution, with a 10% rise in used car turnover and a 10% increase in gross per unit profit from used vehicles.
Vertu Motors is another group that performed strongly in used cars. Its first half performance saw like-for-like used retail volumes rise 5.8%.
And Pendragon continues to invest heavily in its used car business with the creation of four industrial used car preparation and refurbishment centres. While this has dented short term profitability longer term it believes it will reap its own rewards.
Companies are looking towards 2019 and investing in their used car businesses. So far, used car values have continued to rise but this may begin to change in the second quarter of 2019 when the impact of WLTP has receded.