Is the arrival of Sun Motors good for dealers and consumers? Watching from the sidelines I need convincing Sun Motors will bring any added value to either dealer or consumer. Firstly I think News UK online classified strategy is confused. They claim Sun Motors has been on the drawing board for 12 months yet they only launched Driving.co.uk 15 months ago under a fanfare that it was going to break the dominance of Autotrader. However Driving.co.uk was only going to advertise vehicles over £14,000. Common sense suggests you can't launch a niche website and go toe-to-toe with a website advertising nearly 400k vehicles. Since the launch of Driving.co.uk they have continually diluted the brand proposition by lowering the threshold value of a vehicle advertised and by the looks of it there is no-longer a threshold. Therefore then how do they propose to sell two propositions that don't in principle have any differentiation? When News UK announced their launch of Driving.co.uk I was personally surprised that they didn't do it under the Sun brand. After all it claims a 12 million weekly readership and has the mass market appeal that would attract both visitors and dealers. So when other newspaper publishers rush to exit the car classified market; Daily mail selling Motors.co.uk to Manheim and Guardian Media Group looking to sell their stake in Autotrader.co.uk, how will Sun Motors fair? They've made some very bold statements and claims about their site including the fact they will have over 100,000 vehicles by the end of February. I don't doubt they will be able to attract visitors but will those visitors find vehicles when they arrive at the site? After 18 months and many changes in advertising thresholds Driving.co.uk have only managed to secure just over 50,000 vehicles and if you look further afield to two other significant launches in the last 12 months AA Cars and RAC Cars have only achieved a portfolio of 60,000 and 80,000 vehicles respectively. Dealers have limited marketing budgets and the introduction of yet another classified is only going to stretch these further. The saving grace though is the "pay by results" model they claim to offer. As for the consumer - well less is more and when faced with a website advertising 400k vehicles that can only be searched by make and model or price then the lifestyle search of Sun Motors is a more appealing search function. However despite their claims, they are not first to market with this and their website certainly is a bit clunky at best. Appreciating it is still in beta but it isn't responsive to android tablets (lots of scrolling needed) and when using the search functionality the distance search didn't work so I couldn't search for say a Ford Focus within 20 miles of Leeds because it still brought back all 7,000+ vehicles advertised on the site. Before drawing any conclusions I urge dealerships to turn to the estate agency market. This sector I'm afraid to say were far more astute at digital marketing 10 years ago than many car dealers are today and it has seen one hell of battle in the real estate classified market. History is littered with those that came, tried and failed to overcome the dominance of the market leader Rightmove.co.uk. Newspaper groups paid big for property portals and most fled with their tails between their legs. Thinkproperty (Guardian Media Group), PropertyFinder and Globrix (News International - now News UK) and others have all been and gone. Today three notable classified websites survive; Rightmove and Zoopla as mainstream players and Primelocation as a niche high value property website. So is there room for a third major mainstream automotive classified website or should News UK look more closely at other sectors and focus onDriving.co.uk? It's going to be an interesting battle and I look forward to watching it play out. But the winners will be those that offer a clear differentiation of service and simplify the search for used vehicles for the consumer.
