Click and collect boosts car sales

A SCHEME for car buyers to ‘click and collect’ from dealerships has been credited with giving a boost to chains Stratstone and Evans Halshaw.

Owners Pendragon, which also has the Quicks chain, has been testing its Move Me Closer scheme that allows customers to select any car from its website and have it brought to a local outlet at no cost or obligation.

It is the UK’s first click and collect service for cars and has triggered a 35.5pc rise in online visits to Pendragon’s website dragging the business of selling used cars into the digital age. This meant there were more than 5m new users to the website, up from 15.2m to 20.6m.

Chief executive Trevor Finn said: ‘It does what it says on the tin and allows customers to find any car and have it brought closer. In essence it is about making it convenient for customers.’

The car boss would not reveal what proportion of relocated cars were bought and whether the scheme was profitable. But he said it attracted customers to his dealerships. Pre-tax profit grew to £79m for the year to december 31 from £64.6m on sales of £4.4bn.

The firm is proposing a final dividend of 0.7p-a-share in respect of 2015 bringing the full year dividend to 1.3p per share. Finn said as much as 70pc of all car sales were bought using credit and that he had sold some models that were no longer in production at a loss or at cost but makes a profit if the customer buys one of those vehicles on credit.

‘A vehicle might be sold at cost price or at a loss but that’s not a sustainable way of going on,’ he said. ‘It would happen with obsolete models. But it’s a risky strategy because we would not be able to discriminate against cash buyers in the eyes of the law.’

The shares fell 0.5p to 35.5p.