CCC

Just popped into the local MINI dealership on way home from the accountants. Salesman openly admitting market is slow at the moment and now is the time to get a deal both new and used. Then popped into Imperial Motors, only person there on a Friday afternoon (other than the sales staff who are very good).

Reminds me of a conversation with a friend in the 2009 crisis. Two of his friends had businesses in trouble. One had a small amount of debt so the bank just called the debt in and forced them out of business. The other had a massive amount of debt so the bank called them in and discussed a repayment plan. A small amount of debt is your problem, a large amount of debt is the banks problem.

I think fear of no deal Brexit is what's presently driving the economy shrinking (though personally I'm hardly surprised, there is no immediate upside, and a lot of opportunity to lose trade for everyone). The banks grabbing cash will become the norm - https://www.mkfm.com/news/local-news/confirmed-saxon-bridge-liquidation/ Sad end to a good business that overstretched themselves, I suspect there may be many more. Keep debt manageable and build your business in a manner that can cope with good times and bad times (and never overspend in the good times, keep the profit for the bad times).

Unless you're a pensioner probably, somewhat ironically given Noacross's earlier post. Seeing quite a few classics now coming on the market for fear of issues once it rolls out to the North Circular. I fancy an R129 but half the attraction is tooling London on days out. Off to London tonight and timing it to arrive just after 6pm to avoid congestion charge.

Last petrol was E500, so a whole 5.5 litres Before that a mere 3.5 litres of BMW. Don’t miss 20mpg though, X5 3.0d does 28 for me, I’d hate to think what the old 4.8iS V8 did.

I’ve always run petrol cars until our present two, the ulez rollout has hit me thinking I should move them on at some point soon (or at least one of them) and the Birmingham think I wasn’t aware of. I’m not sure what the effect will be in large car sales as having run big petrol saloons before the mpg numbers can be scary unless you go for 4 cylinders.

CarGurus on TV at moment with advertising so might explain the waves, people will use them when advertising then revert to Autotrader (who are probably top of mind for most people) after. If AT had a decent marketing manager they'd match Car Gurus TV spend when they are on which would negate it's influence.

CarWow are still privately owned, but fair play to raise circa £60m with what looks like no track record means they must be very good at pitching. With Asset prices so inflated investors are chasing bigger bets and I suspect its small beer to the investors who can write off losses against tax. In fairness I think Car Wow's business model is a lot more feasible than Cazoo's. One regret I had with my last business was not being in a higher transaction value category, however the level of stock risk Cazoo must have can be a killer. Though the same might apply to a lot of finance houses, we dealt with Close who claimed to be more cautious in their loan/value ratio and customer profile.

Given that carwow posted a £16m loss today despite having no real physical costs then it will be very interesting. I'm also a bit clueless about benefit of BCA for in house prep - how many cars will need mechanical/body work to prep them to a retail standard? Can't see BCA doing that effectively? Ditto your comment on P/Ex, are they going to apply dealers nouse or just blindly follow the guides. The Insignia I declined to take in p/ex due to high oil usage and being run close to dry where the customer sold it to Evans Halshaw for a nice price (to him) springs to mind. Cars might feel like commodities but unless they are still under warranty, they aren't. I don't mean to be negative, but in reality we could do with a good recession to clear out the zombie businesses/low profit merchants to get some profit back into the market, and also get some sense back into investors. Indeed. Zoopla was a bit like Rightmove though their money is made by selling advertising (from their own website "How does Zoopla make money? The information and services we offer are completely FREE to the general public. We make our money by selling advertising, leads and other services to professionals/businesses.") So this is a very different model, more like LoveFilm, the guys original business (so people can borrow a car for a week then post it back ) Nothing new there, just the risk of it coming back when it's not as expected.

Me thinks the market for intermediary channels is getting too crowded. If I was AT I'd cut my prices to head off competitors before they eat into my market share.

We usually email a week after to check all ok, IF it is then we ask for review and send a link to AT site. If it’s not then we sort the issue then ask for review after it’s fixed. A few bad reviews and people will get nervous, I certainly do when booking/buying stuff.

Working with a startup at present and with a brother who works in corporate finance I’ve learnt there are a lot of rich investors out there with money to chuck at unproven ideas. Track history of success is the best way to access these people so his record at Zoopla will be a key part. Someone elsewhere reminded me this was a similar business model to CarLand about a decade ago. Though times have changed. TradeGirl, have you considered getting another job alongside? When I started my last business I ran it on its own for the first year, then got a 3 day per week job for the next 3 years. Did many a 70 hour week over that period but kept the wolf from the door and enabled me to reinvest business profits into growth when the business needed it.

Those of us old enough to remember the recessions of the 80's and 90's will know why. We've not had a "real" recession for 30 yrs or so, where we see large scale unemployment and significant drops in housing values. The idea of being unemployed for 2-3 yrs can be enough to scare you into not trading up your car, especially if you've just paid off the last one and are looking at making a fresh £200-£400 per month commitment on the new one. We bought our first house in the early 90's and viewed lots of repos (our place was a part exchange property probably sold at 25% off what the last owner had paid for it). If we see the same again, people will be losing 10's or 100's of Thousands. Not a few. Markets work on confidence, and Brexit is ripping that out of the economy fast, and no-deal would accelerate it. On the upside, a few property bargains will come about, classic 911's might go down to sensible money and zombie businesses (as Thomas Cook were technically) will leave the market reducing competition and increasing margins.

Strikes me as management trying to fill turnover gaps. I’m sure bids will be £60 lower so net price the same. Maybe they will treat it differently in their accounts.

Car wow is new cars though and I suspect car wow users by their nature do a lot of background research before making a purchase.

The beauty is Facebook ads done through Facebook business (as opposed to just boosting posts) is the level of targeting possible and the ability to run split tests. We’ve stopped doing cars for the moment due to volume of work in my other interests but presently doing a lot of work on FB business and the split tests options has enabled us to learn a lot about what works best (aka cheaply).

Zetecs and Duratec's are great engines. For a banger it's hard to go wrong with a Mondeo or Focus. Having read up on BMW"s cost saving measures in recent years (e.g twin to single row chains) then the newer ones are starting to sound decidedly risky, give me an old 3.0 M44 over an N series any day of the week.

I suspect it’s easier to tweak an electric car for performance purposes in a test than an IC..also lots of different power models around nowadays.

Parents seem to think there's a big difference in insurance between the 1.2 and 1.4, but little difference now everything is black box. 1.4 gives you a bit more breathing space at roundabouts/overtaking too. Sold a lovely one 1.4 in Vision Blue to a friend for his daughter, she loves it.

Interesting, if BCA about to be floated then I’ll bet that the business profits have been maximised in advance to get top dollar. Best time to buy flotation is after 12 months when the real profit numbers come in.

I was anti ulez until I sat in heavy traffic in Exeter with my windows open and virtually choked. I had the luxury of being able to close them but the people living by that junction didn’t. The proliferation of the internal combustion engine is what’s killing itself. As for electric cars then I’m sure the trade will adapt (and batteries get cheaper). You can just change dead cells on Lexus hybrids nowadays.

It's interesting times. I've been reading a lot recently and a few books have talked about how widespread car ownership enabled the growth of shopping malls in the US in the 1950's and that, coupled with the building of the Interstates killed off "Main Street" more than 50 yrs ago there. Here in the UK we're seeing the death of the standard high street, but places with leisure alongside retail are doing OK. Where I live (small market town) the Town Centre is doing fine. Yes, poor businesses are closing but good ones are doing OK, and there are lots of coffee shops (and new pubs) but all are doing OK, our biggest problem is now parking. Meanwhile there is no attraction at all to visiting the standard shopping centres in the local towns, as they're all identikits with chain stores, none of which are particularly enticing. Our local Ironmonger beats B&Q on price and offers double the level of customer service and is thriving. I guess we're in just another cycle. When you think about groceries in the last 100 yrs we've been through travelling stores (wife's grandfather had one of these), corner shops with made your order up/delivered, supermarkets, home delivery. Meanwhile people are moving back into town centres to replace retail (L&G just announced plans to build old peoples residential homes in vacant town centre locations). We just need to ensure we adapt to what's ahead.

Arguably a thinning out of the market will help. Low interest rates are helping people enter the market and survive on lower profit margins than before.

Posh bucks market town. It’s topmwbd stuff that’s arguably getting beyond affordable. One we liked was £685 asking, dropped to £650, we bid at £625 at agents suggestion and was accepted, now being told they’ll take £610. That said a lot of asking prices are optimistic, so in reality they houses are losing money vs what was paid, they just haven’t appreciated as much as the owners thought.

From talking to mates who are in management there’s a lot of redundancies about to kick off in their firms, they’d held off hoping for a managed Brexit but with that looking unlikely it’s time to start cutting the cost base hard ahead as the downturn looks permanent. Seeing house prices tumbling round here too (SE) for mid/top end stuff.