awc1000

Both realise they cant survive on their strong home markets alone, guess they are after the r&d and various shared euro build platforms? one of the reasons vag group are winning, something like 10+ models now produced off the golf platform alone?

classic whats this rat business then? anyone elaborate?

There isn't plenty of new RHD stuff sitting around anymore these days apart from maybe the odd manufacturer , and that's the problem amazon would have - delivery lead time, it would be no better than the franchise network which due to most customers choosing spec can be painfully long, in short you can't sell what you havn't got, cars are quite different to general goods which you can sell online and honour a sale by using the accepted 28 day rule for delivery. It will be interesting to see if amazon have the appetite to buy a bulk order and if the manufacturer has the appetite to serve them in this manor, iv'e seen this before in the mid 90's when a certain hire car company ordered thousands of vauxhall cavaliers, many of which were sent straight to auction for a profit, at the time a disaster for the franchises and rv values. One possible swerve by the manufacturers is that they could produce a poverty model unavailable through the franchise network and exclusive to amazon, a price lead type unit similar to the dacia brand. Can't see it working for used cars, i wouldn't want to give amazon a share of the profit in a unit i have prepped, which is what i presume they will want, based on the fact they say they are going to be selling cars not hosting adverts.

Back in the 2007? there were a lot of cars damaged in the worst floods we had seen in our lifetime, the insurers at the time were looking at big loss's, many insurers foolishly attempted to repair some of these instead of paying out, it didn't work and many cars were littered around workshops for months before it was conceded it was a bad idea, since then if it's been in the water it's usually an instant write off. You mention £2k rebuild? any idea what that involved? a rewire alone on that car would be a huge cost an enough to write it off. If it's been payed out and has a marker you have no chance of having it being changed / overturned.

Another hijack job by AT, generic numbers instantly give those who don't fly straight the same credibility as those of us who have had a city business landline forever, so it's good news for those who sell shite from the side of the road, local buyers recognise long standing local landline numbers and that instil's confidence in ringing, exactly the same if i miss a call from a landline - i know where they have called from no matter what they say. There is zero need in having a third party involved between a buyer and seller no matter how small that hurdle is, and we are all capable of monitoring our own leads. There was talk sometime ago regarding AT gathering information via email contact with mutterings that they could then up sell a lead to others and that others were interested in buying your lead - ie supermarkets who spend more with AT, perhaps this new number system could be the start of something similar? who knows, but i do know that if a customer rings me direct then AT have no knowledge of this and hence zero chance of being involved in what is a private matter between a seller and buyer.

Spot on.

great post, interesting point about trade to trade being upfront, think it was due to having to mostly deal and trade locally, everyone knew each other and socialised together with many trade deals done in the pub, these days you can trade a car to the other end of the country without even talking to the buyer, and strange how these days a lot of local retailers and traders don't know or talk to each other.

Final rules due late 2020, and presume implemented shortly after, i guess finance commission will revert to a flat fee or dressed up as something else, either way its bad news for supermarkets and some used dealers who's business model is not based on a car's margin, one supermarket who i used to supply has £200 margin across a lot of their cars Regards new car sales, the manufacturers could be holding the cards here, already plotting how to halt the current decline in new car sales they are the only ones with options, they could introduce % manufacturer owned finance, pay dealers more back end bonus instead of com's, reduce factory list prices making pcp cheaper again, none of these are options for supermarkets. Cant see how the supermarkets are going to avoid the incoming pain, casualties are inevitable, best scenario for us used dealers will be increased new sales, if not the franchises will have an even keener eye on used car profits which is never good news for the rest of us, lets hope they do well on new and loose interest in their used car satellite sites which will no longer be bringing in high commissions after the fca change, if all that pans out there could even be some cheap cars for us to buy again.

When it was initially set up the wbac buyers were all / only based at carcraft sites, where the public had to go to sell to wbac, and these lads were very switched on and knew how to nick a car off the public, wbac were then strangely happy enough to under sell these on to the trade cheap from the carcraft sites in a weekly leave a bid sale, 2006-07 were great for earning fortunes out of wbac, it all changed when a lot of trade lads started taking the piss by hiding keys / history packs / etc so it was decided to send everything to bca and the fun ended. It didn't matter if the cars were fooked because they were so cheap, the problem started when wbac expanded to local delivery points and employed staff with lesser experience, regards appraisal, this is when it became easier for the public to shaft wbac with a knacker, the outcome was dearer fooked cars, and then when wbac sold out to bca the trade lost the appetite for buying the wbac entry's because of bca's deluded idea on the values. buying off them these days? the secret is to work out how long the last owner had it, have a decent relationship with the admin girls so you can spy the v5 pre sale, a decent name and postcode generally = decent cars, they arn't for me these days but good luck if they are your hunting ground

yep usual suspects, anyone want to list their favourite winners??

1-12, you forgot number 13 - tell forum spammers to fook off.

Looking around the omens in my opinion look good, house market, car sales, high street retail, these have all slowed down but with no obvious reason apart from brexit caution, no spike in unemployment, no rise in interest rates, no obvious credit line withdrawal, so we can realistically presume it is just joe public being cautious about spending pre brexit, this could = pent up demand and the used car market could end up having a good november / december for a change, the only thing that could put the brakes on this is if the media carry on with the negative doom mongering, lets hope the media take the opposite stance and take the view "look how well we are doing without you" and stick some confidence back into the economy. It will be interesting to see how the new car game pans out, we hear the manufacturers moaning about increased costs to "land" units here, and we hear them testing opinion by claiming list prices will have to go up, but they are unlikely to get away with this (unless premium brand) and are already having to deal with what has been a declining market for two years now (down to 2.5m units), with many franchise holders here now really struggling and posting annual profits between just 1% - 2%, a lot of these are near folding at the moment and need help fast, so the only solution is to either increase a dealers new car margin or for the manufacturer to reduce their margin, currently most franchises are circa 10-15% margin per unit but the manufactures margin has always been a bit of a mystery - though thought to be as high as 50% in some case's so as you can imagine there is plenty of scope for them to reduce list prices, iv'e seen it happen before in the mid 90's when the media got wind of how much merc made on a new s-class, the result in reduction was huge to the point where a current s-class now still costs the same as it did in 1995! Of course nobody really knows what will really happen post brexit, but those sneeky bankers are usually the first to get wind of how things will pan out, keep an eye on them and it will give us a clue to what is likely to happen.

fiat stilo, post probably still active, just coming up to 1000 days in stock

you have to be very lucky to resolve this cheap if the car is lurching on the slow down to bottom gear, bands for sure, usually from skipping vag 40k service intervals and usually shows itself at 80k+ miles, i'm yet to see anyone confident enough to quote this job pre box removal at sensible money, but have seen plenty of cars with invoices at circa 4K after removal, dsg and multitronics, advise not to get involved.

well we are leaving and that's that, and i think the u.k motor trade will be ok when the brexit dust settles, the real biggest worry for our industry will be a future election with an outcome possibility of a coalition formed of labour and the green party, that would be a disaster- steam driven bicycles

agreed, trouble is the tory's are clearly the best of a bad lot at the moment, god forbid corbyns clown party ever get into power, we would be digging coal again and having tax levy's for steam power

one group of brats got wind of a mobile phone mast going up in a field so decided to have a sit in the day it was due to arrive - when did they know the day it arrived?? they all text each other

VAG TFSI - 1.6 & 2.0 , 2006 through to 2012/13? and some 1.4 at upper miles. 1.8T & 2.0T are generally fine.

point is the ageing generation has contributed over their whole life here, and yes they may not contribute much in retirement but on their passing their wealth gets inherited and will stay in this economy and will "go again", this is not the ethic of a foreign workforce who will simply follow a labour rate elsewhere when the numbers stack up, can't blame them for following the money, yes in the meantime they contribute here but very few have long term plans to put down roots here and what they gain here will at some point leave this economy. i think you are right regarding some engineering / manufacturing but these industry's have always been at the mercy of labour rates elsewhere with staff being their main overheads, not sure what happened regarding the 5 british workers you mentioned, but maybe a poor labour rate had a factor in it combined with being useless fookers, what were they doing?

interesting times, some parts of spain who don't see tourism currently have one third out of work, i think poland suffered such an exodus of skilled workers that their government eventually had to act by upping the working wage, i know it did mean a lot of skilled polish workers went back home, many have stayed here who settled and had children and realised an education here was more beneficial, can't blame them for that the reality is despite all the doom mongers the u.k is still very much envied by a lot of the world regards skills multi industry's etc and wealth, think we will be just fine after brexit.

I fear you have too low an opinion of the british population, granted there are some lazy useless fookers aboutbut we are generally as a nation grafters, skilled, wealthy, entrepreneurial, Leaving the EU v the UK car industry, well there will likely be pain for franchises with increased cross border import duty / crap supply etc as we are already seeing with some manufacturer's aborting us with build slots for more favourable exchange rate markets (try buying a new toyota chr here at the moment) , but the reality is everyone on this forum is in the used car game and none of us are exporting used cars, and for those that do sell the odd car into europe to vlad and his factory mates well it won't even be 1%of your business and will not be missed, keep an eye on that spotty twat you mentioned sweeping the yard because now that he earns £10.50 an hour he is going to be in the market for a used car soon and is your future audience. the EU is a club that thinks its the like the football premiership with 19 top team members, trouble is in reality it is like the scottish premiership with 4 teams and the rest making up the numbers, i'm not interested in being in a league that subsidises other country's with shit economy's and high unemployment, if i was exporting cheap shit out of a factory into europe i would be worried, but i'm not worried because i'm selling used cars to u.k residents who work in the many industry's that will carry on being great. yes there will be exceptions, but the u.k is now so wealthy we can take some financial pain in the short term no problem, as for european business not wanting to trade with us well that is utter bollocks, one example of many - bmw shift 65000 3series in the u/k a year, that's even more sales than fords mondeo, i don't see bmw loosing the appetite for this anytime soon, they like others will simply test us with a price increase and then revert to a reduced factory margin as plan b, and so will everyone else. and in the unlikely event that the arse does fall out of the new car market that will only be good news for us used car dealers. here's the current facts - regards size we are currently the second lowest country in europe for unemployment at just 3.8%, many of the union countrys are in the shit with +10% unemployment with some as high as 15% , so we must be doing something right. i've seen many things happen in the u.k car trade since we have been a united europe and let me tell you increased competition hasn't done u.k used dealers any good, iv'e stood at manheim colchester at a merc direct sale and watched 80% of the late mercs sell to cypriot traders at silly money, no problem with that but the cars then leave this economy - no good for us, iv'e sold a £14k octavia vrs to a very nice polish chap who worked nights at tesco, good for him he deserved it with his epic work ethic, but the car then left the country, again no good for us if all the vrs stock went east, which it did for a while. once these units leave they no longer support the traditional food chain during their life cycle from servicing to ending up as a banger here, these areas are important to this industry as a whole, if it becomes cost prohibitive for europeans to trade in a brexit u.k economy then sorry but the reality is it will be good news for us u.k dealers who contribute to the ecomomy here and here alone. i'm looking forward to leaving, reverting to just competing with other u.k traders who have the same legit overheads as me will suit me just fine. anyone who is still pro remain europe and in the u.k used car game and not happy - you are more than welcome to leave and go test your business model in europe...let us know how you get on

few points - cazoo will only be selling used cars, they have contracted into bca only to use bca services which will be- in house prep with bca prep centres / storage / and forward transport with bca. they will not be buying cars from bca pre auction- no chance, but car supermarket buying rates probably yes. bizarrely they claim to have already been buying stock for 12 months, on launch how they will turn a profit on these only god knows. like others have said, bigger players have come and gone with this business model before -virgin/tesco both thought they could rewrite the industry and both went down in flames. distance selling will hurt them as will valuing p/ex cars unseen, there is a huge difference in the likes of us fetching and inspecting a p/ex car as opposed to a delivery driver who has no financial interest in the p/ex doing an inspection - its loaded and home prompto. in the short term bca will be rubbing their greedy hands happy to take as much of the start up capital off cazoo before the inevitable withdrawal from the market. personally i hope it fails, start up company's like cazoo and carwow are parasites who invest nothing in actual bricks or infrastructure or people, instead they devalue every part of the trade from valeters to salesmen by encouraging punitive working margins before the inevitable fleeing of the market.

I thought it was trader with those price's, UWOTS like it ...with autotrader's new lucky dip search facility there is a new breed known as ...Customers - Using - New - Traders - System......

very true rory, but the old guard didn't build their pot by being as careless at the block as some of the new breed, stocking plans certainly are pushing up auction prices,fair do's for those that are making it work, as for the auction money laundering drug dealer innit - that's a miff...but the bored builder / sometimes car trader types are certainly out in force charging in as ever.

mark your math is impressive for pre 10a.m, scary though a grand a month to smoke, i would love to smoke marlboros again but to strong for me now... besides, if your living in 3 acres you can afford to stand outside and enjoy a marlboro