Carsite goes offline as Tesco Cars is born

The UK’s biggest supermarket business today launches Tesco Cars, a website offering thousands of used cars for sale.

Andy Higginson, Tesco’s chief executive of retailing services, said that the site has been designed to provide a “convenient, easy and safe” alternative to traditional used car forecourts. He said that the cars will be around 20pc cheaper than forecourt-sold cars due to low overheads.

Tesco Cars for sale

Just weeks after the demise of similar operation Autoquake, Tesco are hoping to grab a slice of the £24bn car market. “It is about following the customer into areas of spend. It is a £24bn market and we will have a tiny proportion of it. We can bring trust. A lot of people find it intimidating with the hard sell. There is no hard sell here,” said Mr Higginson.

Car buyers – who can gain up to 2,000 Tesco Clubcard points by making a purchase on the site – will be able to search through up to 3,000 former hire or lease cars each week on the website.
All vehicles sold on the site will have undergone independent inspections by the RAC and by HPI Check, a company that investigates vehicles’ ownership histories.

Tescocars.com
The Tesco Cars website is apparently run by Carsite Ltd trading as Tesco Cars and the service has been launched following Tesco’s acquisition of a significant minority stake in Carsite, which is an online dealership whose own website gas been “down for maintenance” and who have removed all their cars from sale. Tesco has an option to take full control of the venture over time.