grant8064

Cheap for a reason some would say. Don't get me wrong, if you're doing online only with delivery ala Cazoo then naturally stick yourself in an area with cheap land and cheap(er) readily available staff. But running a pitch is a different matter. Most people don't search nationwide for a car unless it's something unusual so there are regional price differences, even on bread and butter. 20K black Audi A3 from Bradford/Blackburn won't be 20K in Stamford or Bath but will definitely sell...

South East. Same with the garage I use. They're putting it down to the extension also as there's literally no MOTS for public or trade. It's only small but gone from 3 staff down to 1 this week. More noticeable was the main dealer. I don't run a workshop but I know six empty ramps isn't good.

Had a very busy reopening fortnight but the last couple of weeks have been really very quiet. The kind of quiet where you check the email and phone are working most days. Needed to book one into a local main dealer last week and, rather than the usual two week wait, they had every day and every hourly slot free...six empty ramps and down to one tech sweeping up. Only thing seen in the showroom was a some tumbleweed blowing through. Maybe it's a regional thing but it's dire round our way lately.

This. Amount of VX/PSA stuff i've had lately with knackered lockers is silly.

It's just about potential, not the here and now. If you can show the concept sort of/almost does work it can be rolled out in other countries where it might do better. Similar to the JustEat, DeliveryHero, UberEats models. Valuation on current revenue/profit is irrelevant for these types of businesses. Carvana is a prime auto example. Already there's a handful of big "Amazon-esque" companies selling food and household goods...imagine what a dedicated car version, equally as big, would be worth? Selling/renting big ticket items + insurance, warranties, roadside assistance, service plans, managing your repairs at the local dealer....all for a % commission. And, getting carried away, in 20 years time they manage your self-drive EV for you whilst it's out mini-cabbing overnight whilst you sleep, again for a % commission. Or running a car subscription service like Netflix does for generic TV. shows? Whoever gets there first, like Amazon or Netflix etc, is the winner. Personally i'm amazed Autotrader and people like Mobile.de, AutoScout and other ad platforms didn't tie in with auctions/leasing companies and get in on the game years ago. Massive missed opportunity and they'll be as irrelevant/small as paper advertising is now in time.

Couple of oddballs we've had that are £565 taxers were a Subaru Tribeca and Nissan Murano. Both petrol auto 3 litres, or maybe 3.5l. Both an acquired taste in the looks department but in their defense very, very nice places to be for sub 5k, all the toys, comfy seats and had that lovely 20 mpg wafty lazy drive. Both sold very quickly.

Picked one up this week and it's a cracking cheap bit of kit so far, cheers for the heads up

Cheers guys, all very helpful as always

Struggling for valeters at the moment so going to have to resort to doing seats ourselves. Any recommendations guys? Screwfix/Amazon have machines from £40 - £800 and know nothing about them. Cheers

All the best guys

We run two sites within 3 miles of each other and, FWIW, the things i've learnt having a second site is; Get used to lots of running back and forth between the sites. If you staff the second site with a valeter/sales bod trustworthiness is far more important than sales/washing ability. Two sites = two lots of weeding, building maintenance, signage, grief...sounds silly but we run a very lean ship when it comes to staffing and I reckon in summer I lose a day a week maintaining/improving the second premises. There's a lot of benefits dominating your area and killing off the competition if you do a good % of trade locally.

If you're not staffing the second site then just see it as a storage yard for extra stock, you can't be in two places at once. Handy if you want to expand your stock numbers and stops anyone else taking the site on and nicking any local trade you do.

We get loads of the head units with dull lcd screens. Post it off to the ebay guy and he sends it back refurbed, cheapest option we've found.

Everyone we've seen has worn one or we've given them one to wear. No complaints from people really. Bit of a different customer profile to you though Rory

+1 Run your business from the point of view of how I you expect to be treated. Doesn't mean you have to bung a quarter tank in every sale though, we just do enough to put the light out which is fair IMO.

I've heard some horror stories surrounding these rates assistance companies. Avoid IMO. I successfully challenged our rateable value myself and it was really easy to do with the councils assistance, bit of a faff but worth the effort. 1) I compared my rateable value to similar forcourts/sites in our area online via the councils website/planning portal. Found out we were paying more per sq metre/foot than others for comparable surfacing (gravel, tarmac, hardstanding etc attracted differing rateable value for some reason). 2) Downloaded that info, drew a kids sketch birds eye view of our site with a pen with annotations and sizes, got my old rates bills and chucked it all in a scanned document and sent to the council simple covering letter explaining the issue. 3) Matey from the council came down and couldn't have been more helpful. Given the reputation councils have I was surprised and it seemed like they really just wanted to correct their mistake. Remember to work with them not against them and have all your documentation physically to hand and in a PDF or something you can email.

Used execinsurance.co.uk for years, Mark Pope handles our account and can't fault him.

I use Motorcheck. It's cheap, drags up loads of info and prints nicely for punters. If you check a whacker it often includes photos of when it was advertised in a salvage yard with no front end which is quite fun. The guy running it appears on the various FB groups now and then, has the right ideas and seems like the kind of person/company I want to use/support.

...had a few parts made of that stuff myself this month

Just get on with it, no point being afraid. Currently people need cars and there's very limited supply. Will people need cars in a few months time...probably. All you can do is work hard, efficiently and keep an eye on costs, same as every month. If there's a mega recession I won't be able to stop it.

I spent over a month waiting for a kit with the right ecu/pas part number to come up on eBay. Seem to have shot up in price since I last bought a kit

Still open next week (assuming retail isn't closed by then). Taking all sensible precautions with gloves, proper grade sanitiser, hand washing, safe social distancing, unaccompanied test drives etc. Open for business and ready for business. Priority though is looking after the guys we need. Paying all the trades; dent man, trimmer, painters and valeters same day they invoice so they're not stressing and trying to find them a bit of work here and there. Luckily we only have two staff but they're aware they can ask and have any time off they need for shopping, family stuff, emergencies or if they're just feeling a bit overwhelmed by this all (they're both too proud to accept help but the gesture's there). Can't influence any of what's going on but we literally are in this bollocks together so getting people paid on time and helping out where we can is the goal for now. That and concreting a few potholes on the forecourt Monday if T.Perkins are still open. (not nice to hear about the break in's guys...feel for you)

Our painters usually seem so pissed and high on fumes i'd doubt they even know what's going on.

But then they wouldn't be "we buy ANY car". They can't start saying sorry we're not buying cars right now can they...totally undermines everything they're about. Personally nothing against them. Wish i'd come up with the idea and made it work as well as they have.

I remember MG had software issues in the past, ended up with loads of those MG6 saloons getting scrapped, but you'd think they'd have caught up by now. Gonna be a world of pain when all those electric ZS ones get to a year old and start throwing a paddy.