Dealer’s Diary
Steven Ward admires Bentleys.
Sales of the new Skoda Kodiaq are going great guns. It’s easy to see why: it’s a terrific family car and while it’s not quite premium, which means it doesn’t have much bling, it has some really neat touches.
No longer does Rolls-royce hold bragging rights to having an umbrella in the door. The Kodiaq now features this, although it’s a more reserved little brolly than a chromehandled golf item. If you need to scrape the ice from the windows, there’s a little scraper inside the fuel flap.
Let’s say you’re sold on the car and you want to buy one. My local dealer is quoting a minimum of seven months’ lead time to buy and itincreasing all the time. However, you can lease one via a PCP agreement immediately, because Skoda is restricting dealers to two cars per month for outright or HP sale. The future of the motor trade is leasing, whether you like it or not, even if this relentless drive to encourage perpetual leasing is slowly strangling the used car trade.