Five Things you should do to make selling a car on Ebay easier and more profitable.

(1) Provide a clear and accurate description. Seems like common sense but the amount of people who people who frame their listings as “2008 Audi for sale. Good car call Tony” Amazes me.  Tony here will be answering emails and taking phone calls for the rest of the week.  He will also have to do a load of viewings and his car will not meet its reserve. Take the time to provide all the detail you can. Think of questions you would like answered. The more info you provide the less time you will have to answer silly enquiries and the more you are encouraging genuine people to bid with confidence.

(2) Be Honest about a cars faults. I will stop reading your listing if you describe your car as mint…its not, it’s a used car and I value your honesty. I tend to list cars by giving a summary of the car in general, Then I highlight good points and then I make bidders aware of any faults or imperfections. Do this so you don’t waste your time and other people’s. Once the auction ends the money is not in the bank. If you have miss described your car then expect the buyer to walk away without completing the deal.

(3) Check your Model and Spec and any extras before you list your car. Dont presume that All GT models have the six speed gearbox that your car does,  that may have been a valuable extra. Look out for value adding extras like Leather seats, 7 seats, sat nav, climate control etc you may find your car may be the GT model but also had another £1500 worth of factory extras. Nice bonus for the buyer but may have cost you some interest from other bidders.

(4) Take some good quality pictures and try to show your car at its best, but also highlight the few faults you have listed. You can take pictures of your dirty car on your camera phone if you want, but if you want to sell give it a wash and drive it to a location where you can take some nice pictures that show the car well. No matter were you live there must be an open space or car park where you can take some decent pictures of your pride and joy.

(5) Take the time to list all the cars service records and old Mots you hold for the car by mileage and by date. This is an important set of documents that help to sell your car. Full service history can mean a car with 80000 miles has had 3 services at 25K ,38K  and 53K. Another 80000 mile car with full service history may have nine service stamps from the one garage with the last service being @78K which included new tyres and a cambelt. I know which car I value far higher than the other.

Okay follow these tips and make your ebay selling experience a succesful one.

Remember you sell on your terms. So specify in your listings whether you are available for test drives and what the method of payment will be. If you follow these guidelines and list your car honestly then people will bid with confidence from miles away without feeling the need to view the car.

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© 2012 – 2013, MD. All rights reserved.

(1) Use the online Aggregator websites. Its a little bit time consuming but worth the effort. Once you have filled in one you will be able to copy and paste your details into the others. We have had good results from confused.com but you can also try comparethemarket, moneysupermarket,go compare etc.

(2) Get quoted for Fully comp. Sounds like an anomaly but most Insurance companies want to insure fully comprehensive only so you may actually end up paying a premium when you try to save money by going third party only.

(3) Enter Accurate mileage. Dont round up mileage to a rough estimate. No need to say you are doing thirty thousand miles a years when the real figure is closer to twenty.

(4) Up your excess level. Obviously keep your excess at point that you are happy with but even changing your excess from £100 to £150 can make a big difference with some insurers.

(5) Consider you Job Title. Most important point here is dont lie about what you do for a living but most people could summarise their work role with a few different terms. You would be surprised what industries can be weighted against.

The joy of the compare all websites is you can enter your information and get quotes. Then make small changes and re-submit. There are some companies such as Aviva and Directline that do not participate on these sites and they may be worth a call. Finally if you have specialist needs or feel you need to discuss a bespoke policy its always good to pick up the phone. If your current insurance company is offering you a poor deal but you would like to stay with them then ring them up and explain that while you are happy to renew they are more expensive than their competitors. If they want to keep the business they will sharpen their pencil.

© 2012, MD. All rights reserved.

(1) Give your car a wash and a vacuum. If you are serious get it valeted or give it a coat of wax. Why do this ? See how keen you would be on buying the dealers car if it wasnt looking smart and shiny on a forecourt. Imagine how interested in the car you would be if the boot was full of shopping and the car was coated in dirt and the rear view mirror had twelve magic tree air fresheners attached.

(2) Get all your Paperwork in order. If you have a book of service records,old mots and related bills then package them together in a folder to present to a dealer. You need the dealer to know that he is buying a much loved motor car with the paperwork to back it up. If a dealer is aware of how good your car is he may have an eye to retailing it to one of his customers rather than sending it to auction.

(3) Be aware of how much your car is worth. This wont take long use the Autotrader, ebay, motors etc and see what similiar cars are selling for. Dont be fooled by people who over value their car,  and

(4) Use the “we will buy your car for cash” type underwriters. Even if you dont sell your car to them you will get a solid offer for your vehicle. It will most probably fall short of your expectations but a concrete offer will at least give you a real price to work off. Shop around and use a few of these services.

(5) Ask the dealer for a straight cash price for his car. This will show you how he really values your car . If the straight price is very competitive you may want to fall back on one of the previous offers you have received or try your hand selling your car yourself.

© 2012 – 2013, MD. All rights reserved.

(1) Do your research and know exactly what make,  model and spec grade the car you want is.  Spec levels and options can get confusing so be clear about what you must have and what you are prepared to live without.

(2) Be certain of how flexible you are prepared to be on Spec, Colour and waiting time. No need to be wishy washy on this, If you are only after the GLX-i Model with Sat Nav and Climate control and will only take it in Meridien Black Metallic and must have the car delivered within three weeks then you are a different customer to the one who would prefer the GLX-i model but is open to suggestion on options and colour if the price is right.

(3) Know exactly what the car should cost. Using your exact spec find out the Manufacturers on the road price. Then look around to see what level of discount is the norm. Try What Car magazines price check and also look at Autoebids Target price which will show you actual recent prices that have been acheived for customers.

(4) Ring Dealers direct first(or send a blanket e-mail) The main dealer should be more expensive than a broker but whos to say they dont have a cancelled order about to be delivered or they need to sell another two of the car you want to buy before the end of the month to reach their quota. For a few minutes work its worth trying.

(5) Contact as many brokers as possible and let them fight for your business. I wont list any companies here but five minutes on a search engine and another five in the yellow pages will find you plenty of brokers. You would think there is one big pool of cars that we work out of but different brokers have different suppliers.  Make sure you employ them all.

Okay theres your Five tips let me just wrap up by saying. The customer that gets the best deal is the one who is most flexible. If you want to buy an Insignia but a broker can ofer you a mega deal on a Mondeo then you are in pole position. If you dont mind waiting a bit and colour is within reason not the clincher then you should be getting a decent deal as well.

You dont pay Brokers any up front fees if they can get you the deal you want and you are willing to proceed then its time to make a payment. I am all for contacting as many dealers and brokers as possible, if you dont want to do this then send them an email. If you are trying to avoid spam take five minutes to set up a hotmail-gmail-yahoo email account to be used solely for the project.

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• Killer Tips for Trading or Selling a Car
• Upcoming cars in UK: 2013
• 2013 Hyundai Genesis Coupe
• The US Automotive Market Is In Trouble

© 2012 – 2013, MD. All rights reserved.

I did point out at the time that I believed Tesco only viewed Cars as a gateway product to Finance,Servicing,Insurance etc,  this was based on my knowledge of the car trade and the ridiculous margins that the trade works to.  So a little over a year later Tesco have decided to shut this project down. I am not surprised and the only eyebrow raiser was why they didn’t get out after about two to three months, time enough to know used cars are a non runner.

Tesco as a company will steamroller to massive profits as usual this year and the closing of a car retailing arm will be one of several hundred promotions/strategies they will introduce or scrap on a yearly basis.  I think analysis of stock or pricing models etc is old news, we all knew the model and plan. The bottom line is Tesco introduce Lean systems into the market. In any retailing project they take on they look to trim the fat out of the supply line so they can place the product into the consumers basket as efficiently as possible.  They cut out waste, cut out middle men and agents, streamline systems to be as labour effective as possible, maximise existing profit streams and develop new ones.

When Tesco entered the UK used car market they entered the leanest possible used car market on the planet. I have moved around the world buying and selling cars, I keep in regular contact with overseas clients and can guarantee you that nobody works for smaller money than a UK used car dealer. Today I will have buyers at Three large auctions spread out across the country.  They will be standing toe to toe with buyers for major chains and retail supermarkets who will all be trying to buy similar product.  We all see cars differently and this is a determining factor in the sale price.  Another determining factor is how cheaply dealers are prepared to work,  and when it comes to saleable stock that has a good turnover  large retailers are happy to take on good Vauxhall,VW,Ford and Toyota stock  with £300 to £500 ticket in them and hope to be able to make any actual profit from Part/ex or a  finance/warranty/servicing plan.  When I speak to friends overseas bemoaning the fact they only pulled a few grand from a used deal or speak to friends in other retailing businesses moaning about how they only make £30 profit from an item they are buying for £40 a unit I really feel they don’t know how easy they have it.

In my mind Tesco would have had a definite plan to make it work but a few months of operations would have shown them the real profits, and after looking into every avenue to reduce costs and maximise profits only to find the entire industry at its cutting edge was running as lean as possible anyway, decided they would leave it to us and get back to profitable projects.

© 2012, MD. All rights reserved.

There are many problems for retailers but the product coming back off lease is increasingly too mileagy. Despite modern cars being capable of doing the mileage it is still hard to convince a retail public that wants a sub 12K per annum vehicle. Guides have been generous on pricing also and estimates are based on smaller numbers of high mileage vehicles coming to market, the result retail and low mile cars are smashing book and the regular 25-30K cars are recycling and finding a new home slow work.

The export market is expanding with strong sales to Eastern Europe and Southern Africa. Sales in Ireland,Malta and Cyprus remain strong on low emission models that comply locally.

© 2012, MD. All rights reserved.

ALFA ROMEO: Fear of running costs is not helping Alfas at the moment and once they go over 3 years or start approaching above average miles they are becoming a less viable retail proposition for dealers. The GT Coupe Blackline with the 1.9 JTD diesel unit is sought after. The Mito has been well received and is holding up well, Like the fiat 500 it is selling best in solid colours red,Black and White. Too early to pass comment on the Giulietta with most cars remaining  within the dealer network for the moment.

AUDI: A2 surely the best investment that was ever made in a new car ? A below average miles car writes its own price.  A3 and A4’s are still good sellers but are being affected by the amount of ex lease and high milers on the market. Diesels are still preferred with S-Lines making over book and White cars in Particular making well over book. The daylight running lights that were much derided at launch on the A4 are popular with customers, and salespeople report back that they are asked for this feature constantly. Even with a recent cosmetic facelift The A6 is looking a bit dated and we are seeing a big drop off in demand pre 07.  In the Qs the Q5 appears to remain good stock in all models and prices are holding firm.  Q7 is getting old enough for a few cheapies to be floating about and last year’s facelift is starting to impact on 06 models.  Fresh low mileage stock is still at a premium for dealers, S-Lines have a quicker turnaround. Fresh A8’s are main dealer territory only. Older cars can be good stock for specialist dealers who can sell them and prices are affected geographically. For non specialist dealers they are a price driven item, otherwise they are sitting around for too long.

BMW: 1 Series remains very good stock even in petrol. Despite an influx of ex lease coming to the market many appear to have been urban leased, with the motorway milers looking at 3 series instead. Because of this high milers are rare and unwanted stock. There are so many 3 series about that it is hard to give a snapshot, however in summary, despite its ubiquity the 3 series remains a highly desirable motor car. 2 to 3 year old cars with sensible mileage are sought after and making over book regularly,  with M sports and Leather cars being the most desirable. Petrol cars are having a trying time with the 325, even in coupe form finding it hard going at the moment.  The 5 Series had been Bulletproof until recently with Msport and Leather cars making beyond top book money, they are now however on a slide and a good  520D can be picked up for £10000. There are too many mega milers knocking about and only cars with extensive histories are attracting any attention. 530 and 535D particularly in Msport and strong colours are still good sellers if you can find them. Too early to comment on the new 5 but it is thought that BMW’s cross platform strategy will affect its own sales in time. Offers are invited on old model 7’s and they are specialist territory only. Current model from 08 is still staying within the dealer network.  The X3 has shown strong residuals and it is testament to BMW that they still look modern despite being 8 years old. Two Litre diesel with the new (177) unit is popular. The 3.0 is good stock under 3 years old and the xdrive auto is sought after. 2.5 petrol in plain spec is the least loved.It will take some time for the new model to impact on the old models price, particularly as the new model is being pitched higher in the market than the old one.  Private plated oldie, petrol X5’s are changing hands for £5000 and all petrols are struggling in general.  This does not represent the real picture though. A 3.0D X 5 is still the most desirable car in its class, with retailable cars that haven’t been to mars and back holding good money. New shapes are holding firm with only the 3.0 petrol taking a knock in popularity, The bigger engine petrol cars are still run by people who can afford fuel.

Chevrolet: A steady depreciator once you get the first year of ownership out of the way. Unfortunately that first year wipes out 50% of their value. The Matiz is an established bingo hall crawler with a stronger following than the rest of their models which admittedly are competing in a hard market. The Captiva 2.0 CRD has held its value well since it came out in July 07.  It is well equipped and priced for its class, rarity is keeping prices up, with the 7 seater particularly sought after.

Chrysler:  They showed some courage to bring the PT Cruiser to market and some madness to persist with it for another 10 years. Second hand Chryslers are slow turning stock unless they are very cheap, and lately they are that. Their solid performers are the Voyager/Grand Voyager and 300C. The Voyager and Grand voyager are steady depreciators second hand; demand is strong for the 2.8CRD at the moment. The 300C or Plastic Bentley, as in “that Plastic Bentley had me fooled from 500 yards!” has been Chryslers star performer but is now on the slide. Customizers provide a home for the most unloved examples but even the fresh retailable cars have slowed down with dealers struggling to sell cars in the wrong colour and spec combos. The market is looking for Black and Silver with the Hemi rims. Buying a new one would be brave and expensive.

Citroen: C1 and C2’s like all little run-arounds at the moment are faring well. With 2-3 year old cars good stock. C3, Pre facelift cars were holding their own but are now struggling in a competitive market. New shape appears to be desirable but it’s a bit early to comment. C3 Picasso from April 09’ is a strong seller at the moment particularly in diesel, but petrol’s are only about £1500 behind.  Diesel C4 Picassos and the bigger Grand Picasso remain a good seller however a proliferation of available cars means only the lower mileage cars are being chased at top money. A strong export market is also keeping prices up at the block. EGS still makes a premium but not as much as before. The C-Crosser has been a strong Performer and continues to make decent money with low mileage, as with all big citroens their marketability drops sharply with excessive mileage. The new DS3 is too new to give an accurate view of the used price but we think all indications are this will be a safe investment Particularly in Black or strong solid colours.

Daihatsu: The Little Copen is stronger and bigger than it looks but many were not convinced. Still a seller for Dealers and specialists but they are buying them cheap. The Copen has suffered like all other soft tops this summer, without the usual bounce in value they receive when the sun comes out. The Sirion is a good seller in the small car class and extremely low mileage examples are favoured. The Terios since May 06 has been an excellent investment and continues to devalue as slowly as any car we can come up with. Lack of stock keeps prices generally over top book.

Dodge: The Caliber is standing up well beside its lager namesake (almost) Pound for pound one of the sharpest depreciating cars ever sold. Diesels are a tad better than petrol’s but they only sell on price to number plate collectors. The Nitro suffers bad depreciation in their first two years and then fills a hole in the 8 to 10 grand bracket of the budget bling market. A very low mileage Auto has a buyer waiting.

Join us this Wednesday when we continue from F.

© 2011, MD. All rights reserved.

The truth of course is that every inch of the industry is being affected by cut backs.  In the case of Autoglass people are living with stone chips they would have previously attended to or they are buying their own repair kits off ebay.  Autoglasses’ main source of revenue is its partnerships with Insurance companies and it is Insurance company cut backs that have had the main affect on Autoglass.  Insurers are squeezing their premiums down as much as they can and insurance companies are shaving off any extras they can.  This in turn means they are not encouraging customers to get their chips fixed and not allowing windscreen companies to seek out the business on their behalf.   Of course it would be a bad move by Autoglass to shift  any blame onto the Industry that keeps it afloat, so they had to take the bullet on this one.   With people scratching their heads trying to work out what the real problem could be, inexplicably a leaked memo surfaced which explained it all for us.  Good Luck to all the poor souls affected by this and let’s hope none of you are out of work too long.  Although despite rival firms sticking their chests out to claim the industry is booming I suspect you may be looking at work in other sectors.

© 2011, MD. All rights reserved.

Lack of understanding of technology is a tired excuse, you are capable of spending a few hours in front of a computer examining what you like and don’t like. You can spend a few hours going through competitor’s websites; you don’t have to rob ideas just scan for features that would work well with your companies way of doing things.  Lack of money is no excuse either you don’t need to have some mega flash video embedded site that costs a fortune.  As the web has matured flashy graphics sites have become tiresome to navigate, customers just want to be able to access your content easily.

There are a lot of web coders and designers knocking about who can put a site together for small money.  If you want to waste money call in a media company throw your hands in the air tell them you haven’t a clue what you want and watch them burn your cash.  Or you can work out on paper roughly what you want your site to contain, what features you are keen on having and what you definitely don’t want.  The more detail you can provide the better. Then you can send out the specs to freelancers or freelance websites which are easily found, and be surprised how inexpensive it can be. Your website is your interactive business card; have a good look at your site, is that how you want your company to look? Are you happy at how you are being presented? Because if you’re not then you are handing out your business card to potential clients, hand written with black marker on a piece of cardboard cut out of a cornflakes box.

If you don’t have a web presence you need to start today and even then you will be playing catch up. If you have a company with any form of profile you need to sign up to all Social media companies now, even if you are not in a position to promote your company you need to be in a position to protect its integrity. “Cyber squatting” is a nineties phrase and you would think it only applies to large multinationals, not anymore I’m afraid.  As web crawlers look to find niches and backlinks from anywhere, if your company is known to more than a handful of people then somebody will set up an account and purport to be you. Example? I thought I was following respected Irish motoring Magazine “Auto Ireland” on twitter I must admit their tweets seemed spammy and uninteresting so I didn’t pay much attention. Only recently I have noticed their output getting more and more bizarre.  In the last week I have received updates about a homeless Canadian footballer, Duke Nukem video games and this morning a link to some eastern European “babe” site with a picture of a BMW being the justification for the tweet.  Only when I then decided to actually investigate did I find that this account is based with a hosting company in the U.K and is obviously nothing to do with the real magazine. In the meantime this account has several hundred bemused followers and the real magazine has no presence at all on social media sites. It is not alone, thousands of companies are being cheapened in this way.

So you have now spent half an hour setting up your accounts or have barked orders at somebody to do it for you, what next

The purpose of Social Media is to promote your company, interact with customers provide them with information that they seek, and to inform the public of something good that they will want to hear.  This could include a competition with a decent prize, an invitation to a product launch, a 10% off weekend, a buy one get one free offer that is actually  good value.  It is not an opportunity to treat your customers like dopes and fill their inbox with spam and generic rubbish.  A couple of car supermarkets and Car sales Magazines think they are supposed to post a live feed to their stock lists , this is a bad idea.  It is very hard to sell to people on social networks and if you try too hard and look like you are selling then you will fail.   Any goodwill you receive will have to be built up organically, for example if you have studied the market and can claim that your Maidstone branch is currently offering the cheapest 59 plate mondeo in the country then this is newsworthy and will spread around by itself and next time you inform the public of similar news it will be taken seriously.

If you have something to say then shout it.  Don’t send links out to pages where people need to register with your site to get the info; this is just frustrating and reflects badly on your company.

Do it yourself or at least try.  There are companies that offer to take care of all your social media marketing for you. “Take care of it”, like it’s something that needs to be done, like an oil change?  You and your companies’ personality should be unique and should come across in your site, blogs, posts, tweets etc.  If you are big enough to have employees then you can assign the job to a trusted staff member and try to keep involved and pay attention to what’s being put out.  Don’t pay someone for the quantity of their output; pay them for their quality of output.

You can have several different accounts:  If you have a few business interests then set up accounts and target these sectors independently, customers to your mot centre don’t necessarily need to know about your 10 session for £50 deal at your tanning salon.  Unless you are a bit larger than life and have a personality, then keep your business and private life separate.  I have numerous accounts for varied interests all set up for business, on each of these accounts there will be interesting characters that remain followed or friended because I enjoy their occasionally funny and usually unrelated updates, unless you are one of these people that can happily live in public then give it up.  Nobody needs to hear “rough night last night, going to the bog” etc(and I’ve received much worse from professional people) A bit of humour is great but the joke that went down well with friends in the restaurant on Saturday will not be so well received by customers or associates on Monday morning.

People are constantly bombarded with “free”.  The amount of “free” that now exists has cheapened the word.  Volvo are running a face book campaign where they are offering a free car. I want to be part of that!  People like free cars, People will degrade themselves in public for a free car,  so this is a viable campaign.  It might cost them a car but if they collect and use the data they acquire correctly,  then it will be cost effective and valuable publicity for them.   Now we don’t all have the budgets to offer free cars but don’t think offering free brochures or stickers is something people get excited about in the 21st century.  Before you launch any online campaign ask yourself is this something that I genuinely want to subscribe to or follow. If the answer is no then scrap it and only go at it when you actually have something to offer.

© 2011, MD. All rights reserved.

© 2011, MD. All rights reserved.

© 2011, MD. All rights reserved.

The figures (not just in the car trade) are being manipulated such that we are getting good and bad news concurrently from the same batch of numbers, with figures being down 5.2% of this, against 2.3% of that which equals a 7% gross ?  Frankly you are getting more sense out of the gross output of goat cheese from Uzbekistan. The facts are we are deep in a recession, money may be cheaper to borrow but it is more difficult to get. The knock on of this is finance deals that would have gone through unnoticed two years ago are getting kicked back. This is what’s keeping fresh used car prices up.

Companies have seen their car spend tip the balance, and they are now chasing lower to run, lower to tax, easier to fuel  low co2 cars as the major factors in their fleet purchasing decision process. This ultimately will be tomorrow’s expensive used car. The same effect is apparent with retail consumers struggling with fuel and running costs.  The only real winner in new car sales has to be contract lease companies,  and if you look at the top ten new car sold in May it is the usual perennials of the leasing industry  Fords, Vauxhalls and Volkswagens . The Nissan quashqai made it into the top ten but again it is available with good finance options and appears to be holding its value with launch models only now dipping below 10K  (this is from a man that once bought a murano!!).  Thankfully I placed £200 with Betfred for a twelve month slide in new car sales at 25/1  last year so one more month and I’m quids in !  I didn’t really, but until all this cheap money in the pot starts to get spent and the government can offer consumers the assurance to drop into their savings,  the figure will continue to slide for another while yet.

© 2011, MD. All rights reserved.

BCA currently runs European auction centres in Spain(4 Centres),Sweden(1),Portugal(3),Nederlands(1),Italy(1),Germany(8),France(3),Denmark(1), Belgium(1),Austria(1) Although it is telling that almost 80% of its 4 billion per year turnover comes from Its base in the U.K. Of its French operations Bonneuil remains the busiest, running auctions on Mondays and Tuesday with a Premium sale taking place twice monthly  on a Thursday. Lyon runs every Wednesday and Saturday and for the moment Nimes is scheduled for Tuesdays only. A visitor from the U.K would struggle to come to terms with amount of stock available, with European auctions regularly only fielding 50-80 units, however Closed Internet sales are proving popular with the bigger dealers. The tax free export sale in Barneveld in the Nederlands is targeted for and busy with Export buyers from eastern Europe. We are saving up for a trip abroad to see if we can find out more about the attitude amongst the trade in Europe. If anyone can update us with any first hand news for any European Auctions and save us a trip we would love to hear from you.

© 2011, MD. All rights reserved.

Regardless of whatever figures we have seen, the last two weeks of the month have seen a vast improvement in sales. Cars are back on sale below book,  Only exception this week was The BM group sale in the east midlands we attended this week where cap clean was getting smashed and cars were selling.

© 2011, MD. All rights reserved.

I’ve read from a few sources in the last week that industry insiders believe that car dealers are investing heavily in Google adwords, because of this Key words are achieving high prices and car dealers are effectively bidding each other up.

Adwords is an advertising program on google where you effectively buy “keywords” ie the search terms that get entered into the search box. If you pay the right price for the right words then your company will pop up in front of peoples screens when they perform a search. You buy these keywords by bidding. It’s a closed auction where you set your budget and your price, and everytime one of your links is clicked Google debit your account. In its simplest form you can set a budget of say £100.00 and offer to pay 5p for the adword “golf” you log into your account later and find that you still have £100.00 and no clicks. This is because  a couple of thousand others had the same idea as you, only they were not so cheap, therefore they got ranked up high and got traffic. The next day you might decide to offer £2 for the same word and find that you were the highest rank but your £100 credit was burned out in two minutes flat.  And just because the traffic was driven to your site it does not mean they converted into sales, it’s up to you to have a killer site with a fantastic offer running thats going to get sales.

Now I am involved in a number of web companies and adwords is an intrinsic part of the business but its a very complicated system to play correctly. The example I gave above is just a starter view, in the real world if you wanted to have a succesful adwords campaign you would be bidding on hundreds of keywords, you would be studying the analytics to see which words you would be dropping,refining or raising and lowering your bid price.

Now in my experience of motor dealers and their IT skills, they come in several stages.

Stage 1: Is aware of the Internet, Knows that its an invaluable source of cat videos and teenage skateboarders losing their ability to reproduce in the future.

Stage 2:Is Using the Internet, advertises on-line with a 4 page Autotrader template which they kindly update for him every monday.

Stage 3: Has a pro website that is updated regularly, possibly outsources coding and graphics to a web company but is capable of rotating/adding stock to the system in-house.

Stage 4: Fully Automated Web enabled dealership, All design and architecture of the site is in-house or from a central station. Salespeople available online,shopping cart for parts and accessories all online.

I can Elaborate on those models further but as you can see It is really only very large multinationals or Supermarkets that would have the benefit of investing in adwords and as these companies invest so much money in Marketing in the first place that A: google adwords would be a small part of their programme and B: with such heavy investment in search engine optimisation and blanket advertising across available media you are going to pop up on search engines anyway.

Now if I had a particularly specialised niche in the industry, say for example I supplied hoods for MX5′s and nothing else, It might be in my interest to have a little adword account looking for the search term “mx5 hood” but even if that was working out too expensive to get into I would reduce it down to ” roadster+hood+south+west” this might bring me down the sort of money I want to pay and get me a few hits.

I am certain that the industry is using adwords but by the Industry, I mean from manufacturers to advertising groups down to car supermarkets.I cannot see how it would be an effective media plan for a common or garden car dealer. If there are any car dealers out there that are using this technique I would love to hear from you (in confidence) so that we can have a better analysis and run a further feature

Thanking you

© 2011, MD. All rights reserved.

First off, a bit of background on what Tesco have actually bought.  Tesco have purchased a stake in Carsite with further options to increase the holding.  Carsite in turn were bought into last year by Sir Trevor Chinn former CEO of the Lex Leasing Group, and he is the man who has stitched together the two partners to form the new company.

Carsite have previously been lumped into the same box as Autoquake, as they were both internet retailers.  However the business models differed greatly.  Previously I would have backed the Carsite model over the Autoquake one.  Essentially Carsite was a site, that’s all; they carried no stock and operated out of an airfield in Bedfordshire which was conveniently shared with a couple of other companies, which included lease companies. Their overheads were site management, some sales/handover staff and a building with phone lines and consumables, and probably most importantly the advertising bill.  Essentially Carsite got first option to advertise cars coming back off lease, if they received a deposit on a car or substantial interest they would take the car from the leasing company and prepare it for the customer. If an advertised car received no deposit then it stayed with the lease company and probably went to auction. So what they did was gamble on advertising costs, that’s about it.

I have had some dealing with Carsite in the pre Sir Trevor Chinn days. I found them good to deal with, and set up a supply chain with them to one of my overseas buyers. The main problems I had with them were:  (A)  lack of cars: They never had access to the amount of cars they were advertising. (B)  Lack of variety in their stock.: This may have been more my problem than theirs but it is a fact that if you are living off ex-lease cars you will have a lot of duplicate vehicles in your stock book. (C) The product wasn’t great.  That’s not a criticism of Carsite. A lot of their cars came back from Motability and two other leasing companies, and in my opinion they needed to broaden their inbox to get a better standard of car.

So do I think Tesco will be successful?  You can stand in front of the tide all you want but the internet is upon us and will only grow in strength.  I can think of few things now I would hesitate to purchase on the Internet.  Internet car sales will continue to be a slow growing niche as it cannot, at the moment, satisfy the majority of buyers who want full dealership facilities.  However there is an increasing number of buyers looking to purchase in this way, Tesco have already set up partnerships with car servicing centres to take care of warranties , Surely in time Tesco cars will form an alliance with a car underwriting company or look to set up their own operation. Lets be honest take away the internet aspect and it’s not dissimilar to how many car supermarkets work now.

Tesco obviously have massively deep pockets and can absorb losses in a new market (witness what they are trying to do in the states with “fresh + easy”) even so I can’t see how deep their pockets need to be.  They have not committed to setting up garages around the country and employing hundreds of staff.  They have formed an alliance with an established company and will act as agent between sellers and buyers, it’s not the sort of operation that will burn cash, even if it does take a while for them to optimise the system. Too many internet based companies have put the emphasis on the technology, and a lot of companies have been formed by tech people on the basis that they know how to code a cool website and will learn the car industry as they go along.  As has been proven in the past the medium is not the message.  There are several carcasses of failed internet retailers on the side of the road. Some would point to them as evidence that its risky business, however there have been factors.

In timescale the internet has in a short period become a constant in most of our lives. The technology has caught up to support the ideas. Companies like Jam Jar operated (only a couple of years ago) at a time where the internet was something I dialled up on my PC when I came home from work in the evening.  Now I read the newspaper front pages on my Smartphone in bed, before I get up to start the day.  People sit on the train browsing on their laptops, pads and phones routinely. Everybody has the time to browse for consumables, or cars on the web. Previous Internet based companies where generally marketed well or had good finance behind them etc but where still viewed as “Internet start ups”.  Subsequently no matter how well they were presented they were distrusted. This time it is Tesco. People trust Tesco we are talking about a company with 6000 stores worldwide that controls 30% of the UKs retail sales. It’s fair to say they are pretty big and well trusted; it’s fair to say that £99 refundable deposit on a car will be taken as read by everyone bar extreme cynics.

So far they have ticked a lot of boxes but what else do they have .Lets have a quick look at the man who is heading up the business Sir Trevor Chinn. That would be the same man who steered the ship at lex leasing from the 60s through the 90s when they became the largest car lease/finance company in the country, eventually taking over the RAC.  It would be fair say the contacts are there to solve any supply problems and the car trade business experience is proven.  Whether it is today or next  year , internet based selling will be a fixture of the market in the future.  It will be a slow evolution rather than the revolution I would have foreseen years ago. There will always be room in the market for local used car garages although personally I believe it a braver man than me who would set up a traditional car lot today. Any dealer will attest that the internet has at least proved that if you advertise a car online cheaply, somebody will travel three hundred miles to buy it from you. The old reliables that car dealers would pay a premium for, like a pitch  in a good area to capture passing trade, are less and less important as people are prepared to go further afield for bargains.

Tesco have already come out and stated they have no intention of starting a price war. This for me is the bottom line in the car trade. The sort of margins on cars sold now are increasingly smaller, and more and more profits are being subsidised by the cut from finance and warranty sales. Ultimately there is only so low a car can be priced. And in many instances the big supermarkets and retailers are already working off slim margins. Tesco will not be in a position to dictate the price because lease companies will only sell to them if they are taking a premium over auctions or current remarketers, and auction prices are holding steady because the lease companies are run on such lean figures that they really only want to lease stock that will have attractive residuals. We have all seen the problems that niche leasing companies have run into in recent years.

So that’s my summation. Tesco are not here to eat up the market, they are certainly not here to knock 30% of the price of used cars because that is an impossibility, but they are on the right lines for taking a piece of the action, and I will be watching their growth with interest.

© 2011, MD. All rights reserved.

There were rumblings in the trade since February that Autoquake were struggling. They have subsequently gone into Administration, and what was worth salvaging was last week purchased for £350,000 from the receiver by Carshop.  Who are one of the companies in the trade that appear to be getting stronger through good practise.

So What could have gone wrong ?   I remember the first time I came across Autoquake, I believe it would have been about 2004/05.  All I know is I found three of my sales staff huddled around a computer looking at Autoquake listings on eBay. It would be a bit much to say in disbelief, but they were all aware that on price this crowd were hammering us. What they were looking at was very interesting and I spent the rest of the day going through their stock and website and could see they had a good Idea presented very well.  I have used the internet as a tool for a long time; In retrospect I haven’t used its full potential. But at the time Autoquake were ahead of the game.

I am always sad to hear of the demise of any car group.  For one it means redundancies for normal car people, and for another it’s an indicator that the entire trade is suffering.  When people in the trade where telling me this news however I have to be honest there was a lack of empathy. Autoquake were viewed by some areas of the trade as a group of MBA’s running around with a lump of Venture Capital to play with, and stories of over spending and hubris are floating around in the trade

If you want to analyse a business, sometimes it is far easier to pick over the bones of a failed one than try to get the facts on a fully functioning one. In due course all the figures will be available for all to see, but by then most people won’t be interested.

I was involved many years ago in a high profile Liquidation. The facts of why the company went under were known to me, other high level staff, and pretty much nobody else. But once the rumour train leaves the station in the car trade it becomes some pain in the XXXXX. Everybody knows what went wrong but nobody knows anything.  I don’t know former CEO Dermot Halpin but in fairness to the man he has stuck around to talk about his role and defend what happened, when a month in the Algarve would have been my plan.

So here is my brief and uneducated overview of what went wrong.  First the trade accusation that they were business people and not car people and that they were burning through cash. In my experience Business people know how to make money!!   I’m not party to exact wages figures, but it would be fair to say they had a lot of well paid people at the top.  I also came into contact with a few of their buyers, all of whom were well looked after by industry standards.  In most businesses that would be no harm. If you want to succeed you need to employ the best people and if you pay peanuts you get monkeys.  Well the car trade is not like many other businesses, it’s harder than that. The amount of hard working smart people that have been spat out by the trade over the years is testament to this.  Successful car dealers tend to be workaholics that have employed people to work for them for magic beans, the bigger companies are formed on lines where nobody is paid a penny more than they have to, and that commission calculator just keeps on crunching out new figures at month end.  Over the years if I have visited a garage and seen the directors upgrading themselves to new mercs and being introduced to new finance or IT managers etc I smell a liquidation coming.

Autoquake have claimed that the rise in online advertising prices had contributed massively to their costs.  I can see the truth in this one; five years ago the enticements to advertise online were huge.  eBay motors was cheap and setting up eBay stores and relisting items was very cost effective.  If I had as much online presence as Autoquake then, I would have had a lot of hungry advertisers vying for my business.  Now advertising online is the norm and is very expensive.  I can’t help but feel that Autoquake never really evolved. Their profile never seemed to increase from start up; I don’t remember any T.V ads etc.  The website was so good that they needed to push people towards that instead of selling individual cars. If they had the vision to foresee a web based retailing future then surely they would have the foresight to see increases in online costs ?

Selling online is still a very hard game.  I have personal experience with web based selling and also through the companies I deal with overseas.  In a nutshell people are cynical about handing over a deposit on something they haven’t viewed.  I have been able to buy cars to order for Japanese Import customers, because they are aware that the product comes from far away and it’s a niche market where if they want something unusual they need to take a chance.  With U.K cars I have reduced it down as far as “give me a £250 deposit on your credit card or PayPal, I will procure the car and prepare it so it is perfect for you, and if, when you inspect it you are not 100% delighted with the car I will hand you back your £250” . It is absurd that I would be off buying ten grand’s worth of car for a customer, on the strength of a £250 deposit but that is what you are prepared to do.  And yet it is still hard to get a customer to commit to this, they are still weary of a car they haven’t seen, they fear they are locked into a deal by small print that they cannot see, or they believe that I am going to take their £250 and retire to Mexico on it !

Autoquake were ahead of the game but the game caught up. Autoquake were one of the first “fleet to street” type companies, Carsite where another. The premise was simple, cars direct from Auction/Fleet prep’d and made available directly to the public. The plan was to cut overheads by stripping expensive links out of the retail chain.

If I thought I was exposing “industry secrets” I wouldn’t be maintaining this site. There are no hidden tricks left and anyone with a bit of savvy these days can find cars as cheap as the trade.  Twenty years ago when I used to buy cars from a large leasing company it was impossible to get “in” with them.  I had to buy cars through a friend in London who was able to get cars through a girl he knew that worked there.  Getting in with car leasing companies or big garages to buy their stock took major persistence, big balls and a lot of personality.  Now I can register online to buy lots of stock direct from big re sellers, in many instances the most proof of trading I have to show is a fax number.  Because of this there is no longer some 20% difference between trade and retail,  half the trade are trying to sell direct to the public for whatever profit they can take.

Basing your buying strategy off book value and having an across the board pricing policy:   If I sent any buyer to auctions and told them to get cars at book price, or for the sake of argument 7% below book price I would still end up with a lot of cars, plenty of which I would not consider good stock.  You can analyse the market all you want but the book is merely a guide and sometimes I look at the book price and know that if it says £10000 for a particular car I will still be lucky to buy it for £11500 because it is good saleable stock.  Conversely some cars that book at £15000 I would cry if I bought them for £13000.   Pricing is a specialist role I believe Autoquake put a set figure across the board on their cars. I have seen this policy fail in action many times before.

There was a famous Japanese car importer on Dublin docks in the early 90’s.  At the time they would have imported maybe 2000 cars a month. The operation was so big that it was obvious they were costing the cars up and adding a grand on top.  A grand on top of an undesirable car that was purchased at top money meant nobody wanted it,  A grand on top of a desirable car that was bought cheap at some rural auction meant a bargain.  Myself and most other savvy buyers would commit to buy our cars on paper two weeks before the boat landed.  I don’t want to labour the point but another example is salesman A: does a cracking deal and part ex’s in a car standing us £6000 that if I had bought from auction would be standing us £8000.  So does this give salesman A,B or C the right to sell the car for £7500 and take the profit ?. Absolutely not the rule remains the same in the car trade if you have done your job well and both something well worth the money, you are not obliged to just hand that advantage over.

From looking at Autoquakes prices it was apparent to me that this was happening. There were a percentage of cars that were cheap enough to sell to the trade and an ever increasing amount of cars that were not priced any more keenly than car supermarkets, by now they had lost their advantage.

In the last few weeks we have heard the not unexpected news that Carsite have been acquired by Tesco.   Carsites business model although looking similar to Autoquakes was very different but also was not without problem.

I hope to post my view on Tesco’s new venture as soon as I can get some more qualifying information.

© 2011, MD. All rights reserved.

Shop around for car contracts.  There are hundreds of companies offering deals, but they are generally all eating  from much the same pot.  Some offer deals that are too good to be true and have expensive add ons.  Here I’ve listed my picks from a trusted source. I wont list contact details but if you get in touch I can  forward details on.

Citroen C1 VTR+

1.0 VTR+ 5 Door

Business users £106 plus VAT per month

Personal users £127 incl VAT per month

6 Rentals in advance plus 23 monthly rentals. Contract hire, non-maintained, 5,000 miles per annum.

Citroen DS3

D Style Hdi 90

Business users £179 plus VAT per month

Personal users £215 incl VAT per month

3 Rentals in advance plus 35 monthly rentals. Contract hire, non-maintained, 10,000 miles per annum.

Nissan Juke

1.6 Acenta

Business users £189 plus VAT per month

Personal users £239 incl VAT per month

3 Rentals in advance plus 35 monthly rentals. Contract hire, non-maintained, 10,000 miles per annum.

Mini First

Hatchback 1.6 3 Door

Business users £189 plus VAT per month

Personal users £227 incl VAT per month

3 Rentals in advance plus 35 monthly rentals. Contract hire, non-maintained, 10,000 miles per annum.

Volkswagen Touran

1.6 TDI S 105ps Manual

Business users £199 plus VAT per month

3 Rentals in advance plus 35 monthly rentals. Contract hire, non-maintained, 10,000 miles per annum. Business users only

Mercedes B Class

B160 BlueEfficiency Petrol Sport

Business users £199 plus VAT per month

Personal users £238 incl VAT per month

3 Rentals in advance plus 23 monthly rentals. Contract hire, non-maintained, 10,000 miles per annum.

Audi A1

1.6 Tdi Sport 3 Door

Business users £213 plus VAT per month

3 Rentals in advance plus 23 monthly rentals. Contract hire, non-maintained, 10,000 miles per annum. Business users only

Toyota Avensis T2

2.0D-4D 4 Door

Business users £239 plus VAT per month

3 Rentals in advance plus 35 monthly rentals. Contract hire, non-maintained, 10,000 miles per annum. Business users only

Volkswagen Eos

1.4 SE TSI Bluemotion 2 Door

Business users £253 plus VAT per month

3 Rentals in advance plus 23 monthly rentals. Contract hire, non-maintained, 10,000 miles per annum. Business users only

Audi A5 Cabriolet

1.8 T FSI Manual

Business users £279 plus VAT per month

6 Rentals in advance plus 23 monthly rentals. Contract hire, non-maintained, 10,000 miles per annum. Business users only

Peugeot RCZ

1.6 THP GT 2 Door Coupe

Business users £289 plus VAT per month

Personal users £347 incl VAT per month

3 Rentals in advance plus 23 monthly rentals. Contract hire, non-maintained, 10,000 miles per annum.

BMW X1

Diesel Estate sDrive 20d SE 5 Door

Business users £326 plus VAT per month

6 Rentals in advance plus 35 monthly rentals. Contract hire, non-maintained, 10,000 miles per annum. Business users only

BMW 5 Series

Diesel Saloon 520d SE 4 Door

Business users £358 plus VAT per month

6 Rentals in advance plus 35 monthly rentals. Contract hire, non-maintained, 10,000 miles per annum.Business users only

Mercedes E Class

E220 Cdi BlueEfficiency SE Auto

Business users £379 plus VAT per month

Personal users £454 incl VAT per month

3 Rentals in advance plus 35 monthly rentals. Personal Contract hire only, non-maintained, 10,000 miles per annum.

Mercedes E Class Cabriolet

E220 Cdi BlueEfficiency SE Manual Leather

Business users £430 plus VAT per month

3 Rentals in advance plus 35 monthly rentals. Contract hire, non-maintained, 10,000 miles per annum.Business users only

© 2011, MD. All rights reserved.

© 2011, MD. All rights reserved.

Well it doesnt take a genius to realise that the strength of sterling against the Yen has put a kibosh on the majority of Imports, But there have been other factors too, We will be going into this at length in our imports section but we will also be keeping an eye on prices in Japan to let you know what cars are on the cusp of being importable again. we will also have a look at current shipping options and how to save money on your testing costs. Your Input is appreciated as I will only look at cars that people are asking me about although s usual,within reasons I will attemp to answer all questions

© 2011, MD. All rights reserved.