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A small glimmer of good news this week - Motor Trade Insider
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A small glimmer of good news this week


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I have discovered a way to keep customers happy and dealers selling cars. Make them cheaper! It sounds very simple but the best ideas usually are. From my research so far this month, dealers are still recording high demand for two distinct types of model; either in the small to mid size price range or late 6-18 month old cars. The smaller cars because people obviously tend to downsize in turbulent times and late plate cars because they just look such great value for money against new.

This doesn’t tell the whole story of course and there are daily reports of potential customers leaping with joy on discovering that they can actually afford the car of their dreams, only to have them dashed by the multi thousand pound loss on their trade-in.

There is however desire to buy and some dealers are getting customers coming in to look at finance deals purely off the back of the interest savings on their tracker mortgages. In some cases this has meant a saving of hundreds of pounds a month and customers are looking to use some of that to buy their next car.

This may be a simplistic look at the situation but dealers are selling cars, albeit mainly used cars but surely this will lead to major incentives on new cars and anyway if this isn’t the case everywhere it is just so nice to be able to report a glimmer of good news.

The market in general, in terms of new car registrations, is almost exclusively down but there are however two surprising exceptions to this trend – Jaguar and Volvo, which are 11% and 14% up year on year respectively. What are the reasons for this? It could be, in the Jags case, the massively popular new XF but may also be the renaissance of the X-Type, for years considered in the trade as a Mondeo with a different badge! With the Volvo the new R design models are sportier and have more mass appeal.

Whatever the reasons behind it it’s just great for MTI to relay some good news and some encouragement.

As we say in the trade; keep it simple – it’s a numbers game!

In51der
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    • Ford, GM and Chrysler ask US Congress for a $25bn bail-outPoint of sale car dealer finance on the rise
    Comments: 2
    1. mARK rOBBINS
      12 years ago

      I may be the only one here who finds this, but would like very much to hear from any others with the same experience.

      My site is on a busy main road in Essex and part of a national chain of fuel stations, we hold around forty used vehicles in stock. We are established and known in the area for price sensitive nearly new cars (and boy are they value at present!) however heres the conundrum, the vehicles sitting about the longest are, and always have been the small ones!

      Ford Fiestas, KA’s, Peugeot 206, VW lupo, Vauxhall Corsa, Nissan Micra, Daewoo Matiz, these are just some of the vehicles sitting around on the internet and the forecourt going nowhere! Yet as soon as we put a Seven seater, 4×4, Mini Cooper S, Jaguar or Mercedes and the like out there, its gone!! not always straight away, but always before the small car, the other thing is, take a Ford Ka, it will inevitably be a young girl with her parents, the colour isn’t right, the spec isn’t right, it doesn’t have a CD player etc, or the VW Lupo / Polo, mums who want economy but the boots just too small for their pram! The Nissan Micra, no chance of selling that until the “Lulworth Court” O.A.P. outing comes to town! and so it go’s on.

      No, for us from now on its big is beautiful (and value!) small cars just don’t have that “Want Factor” then again……………………………………………….. it could be just us!

    2. admin
      12 years ago

      Jaguar’s total UK sales were up 22% last month compared to October 2007, in stark contrast to their competitors. A spokesman put it down to the success of the new XF which has clocked up 29,000 global sales since launch in March.

    In51der

    Motor Trade Insider - Bridging the gap between the customer and the Motor Trade

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