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Every day we hear of another big dealer group buying up another business or investing millions building new sites for franchises , i.e Marshalls, Ridgeway , Swansway to name a few spending anything between £5/10 million on JLR sites ! What are your thoughts when you see these massive investments in the motor trade, especially when you hear of how little margins are left on new cars when customers are buying from the likes of carwow ? Plus the pressure to perform every quarterly with targets and pre-registrations , how /when does it become viable to invest these vast amounts ? Your thoughts ?

Manufacturers -Logos, Names ! Just seen a story on AM http://www.am-online.com/news/2014/2/11/garage-owner-under-threat-from-jaguar-claims-will-change-his-name-rather-than-back-down/34381/ About a Jaguar specialist who is being perused by Jaguar for using ‘JAGUAR’ IN HIS TRADING NAME ! I can fully understand manufacturers wanting to protect their’ brand’ and ensure that standards are not compromised to customers , and non ‘franchised’ dealers don’t pose as ‘franchised dealers’ so customers don’t get mislead! I see so many images of ‘used car dealers’ with ‘manufacturer’s logos’ all over their business ‘s . Many years ago I was asked to remove a couple of ‘logos’ off my website and Yellow pages advert. I immediately removed the logos off the website , BUT refused to remove the ‘images’ of ‘logos’ off yellow pages , I explained that these were not ‘misuse’ of logos put images of ‘cars/car grills’ that I either own or have owned and will not be removing then off any advertising or marketing material. Lovely letter back from the manufacturer thanking for the removal and stating that I was right and no further communication was necessary! { i was purely picked on because the ‘local’ dealer was performing poorly and implied I was taking the business away !- nice compliment that I’m a one man band and they ‘were’ the main dealer with a multimillion pound latest showroom ‘} Would love to hear views from BOTH sides! I’m ready to get shot down!