From bad to worse?

 2019 was the worst year in a decade when it came to closures of car and commercial dealers. I heard of and saw unprecedented job losses in the retail motor trade, possibly worse than the recession of 2009.

Dealer groups, and it was the franchised dealers hit hardest, closed sites at quite a rate of knots. Some closed sites to contain losses, such as Pendragon (with 22 used car sites and prep centre) in addition to JLR sites in Stourbridge. They even closed a DAF commercial site, which I found staggering.

Many dealer groups sold off sites to others willing to take on the challenge, such as Springfield. Others like Richard Hardie stomached losses while sadly, some small dealer groups (Jenkins, SLM and Border Cars, to name a few) went into administration. It’s incredibly depressing driving past empty franchise sites, such as the four-times award-winning Bruce Motor’s Peugeot showroom in Hawick. They simply announced they were retiring from the business on New Year’s Eve 2018.

Lookers closed sites including some of the Jennings dealers which they acquired in the 2018 takeover. This included their Washington Kia branch which ten years ago was the best Kia site in the country for sales, having morphed from Ford and Mazda to the Korean franchise.

Wages across the board have dropped in the motor trade as job losses have stacked-up. For the month of June it was estimated that dealer retail profits dropped 31.7%.

2020 isn’t looking to be any better either. Inchcape have issued a statement to deny they are looking to reduce their sites by 20%. Vauxhall and Honda claim they have too many dealers representing them, which means only one thing.

Let’s hope the uncertainty over Brexit and the ensuing political chaos is over and we can get back to buying cars with confidence. We need new cars sales to provide good used car stock. One cannot survive without the other, and we all need the work.