Auto Trader tweaks Deal Builder, Ford teams up with Renault, and Volvo's falling out with Brindley Group – with Sam Watts, episode 235

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Welcome back to the car dealer podcast where we pick our favourite stories of the week

and ask an industry guest to choose which were the best.

That's exactly what they do. I'm not at all sleep deprived in the wrong country.

I'm John Ray and joining me this week is James Bagot, as usual, from his soundproof...

Well, you look a bit like you've been hospitalised.

Feels like a way, actually, but sounds much better from last week.

I said to you, didn't I, last week that now I'm in the boiler room.

I needed to make some improvements and I've made the improvements.

I say me, guess who did it?

Was it Joe?

It was Joe, yeah.

He's done a good job, isn't he?

Yeah, he's done a good job. I mean, you sound pretty good.

That's good. That's good for a podcast, isn't it?

It's ideal, really.

How have you been, James?

Sorry?

How have you been?

I've been fine. There's a bit of a delay, isn't there still?

It must be the satellite link from Japan.

Most definitely. It's because I'm actually nine hours ahead, so I speak first.

I get you.

Okay, sorry, that confuses me. It's all a little bit back to the future.

How is your holiday, John?

I know you're joining us again from your holidays. Are all good?

It is all good.

I did that thing of going to a car auction yesterday.

Of course you did.

I assume all the Japanese people that come to the UK go and see Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, and BCA Blackbush, as well as following in a very similar trajectory.

I did try and buy you a car, which didn't go very well, so I scoured the catalogs for what was coming up.

It was a very nice mini inspired by Goodwood, which was a special edition that they made.

I say they made, mini made it, and then they shipped it off to Rolls Royce,

and Rolls Royce filled it with Rolls Royce leather and carpet and put a cashmere headliner in it and covered it in wood,

and then sold it in, this is about 2007 or something, sold it for 40 grand.

Did they need it?

Yeah, I know.

I didn't realise it was that much when I put my bid in for you.

Yeah, it was ridiculous.

But anyway, we thought it would go for about six grand or something, didn't we?

So that's what you bid, but it went for 12 and a half, this 2007-2008 mini.

Which sadly I did not.

Was it Tokyo again?

It was Tokyo, yeah.

So you don't have a mini, but I do have a different exciting purchase to show you.

Ooh, exciting.

Don't you want to say for Christmas?

You ready?

Oh, yes, it's the cat jumper.

It's the cat outfit.

You've actually bought the cat outfit.

I have bought the cat outfit.

Are you going to wear that to the Christmas party?

That is my intention, yes.

Wow.

So is that replacement for the hat that you're not wearing this week?

As well as, I would say.

This is all very confusing, isn't it?

What's been going on in car sales land?

Well, no car sales, which is the important thing.

No car sales.

It's been very, very slow.

And I've now got 32 cars in stock, so they need to start happening quickly.

Yeah, it's expanded slightly.

I managed to sort that parking out.

So I've got additional storage space now, which is not far from our base point HQ,

which is handy, which means we can expand the stock, which is obviously desperately needed.

But we're obviously doing it at a time when there are no car sales.

Yes, very, very quiet.

But December's quiet.

It's nearly Christmas, isn't it?

So it's going to be quiet.

Yeah.

So good luck in January.

That's all I'm going to say.

Anyway, shall I try our guest?

Please.

Excellent.

So joining us this week, I'm very pleased to say Sam Watts from used car dealer Family Car Guys.

Sam, lovely to see you.

Lovely to see you too.

Thanks for having me on.

Nice to see you, Sam.

Is it Devon you're based in now, or you're Cornwall, aren't you?

Devon.

Come on.

I've got to see all the channel dreams soon, won't we?

Yeah.

Devon.

Very nice to see you.

So how's business for you?

Well, just hearing about no car sales kind of makes me feel a bit better in a way,

but no, it's very quiet December-wise.

And I remember last year, we had an incredibly quiet December,

and then about a week before Christmas,

for some reason, people started to, I don't know, smash their cars everywhere

and desperately need a car before Christmas.

So we're not too concerned at all, but we're just getting ready.

All our cars are pretty much ready to go,

and just using this time to be careful of the cash flow

and make sure the cars are tip-top ready for hopefully a bit of an uplift in leads and sales.

We certainly found that.

At this time of year, you just need to have everything ready to drive away, don't you?

Because the chances of people turning up at the dealership

who've just smashed their car up, as you've mentioned,

is very, very high at this time of year.

So having something that's ready to go makes a massive difference.

Yeah, but it's a bit of a juggle, though, isn't it?

So, I mean, James, you say you've got now 32 cars in stock.

I mean, last year, how many did you have in stock?

Well, about this time last year, probably about 13.

Yeah, I mean, to have the outlay to get all of those cars ready to go for January,

you've got to be pretty certain to go through that expenditure,

watching your cash flow and making sure that you really are ready to get them sold.

They are going to sell, they are going to shift, which I'm sure will happen.

Yeah, historically it has, but we've been pretty cautious.

I mean, there are a couple of little things on a few of the cars that we haven't got done,

but if there's any major issues with them, they're done.

We've changed our stock profiles slightly in the last six months or so,

and we've had to shift cars on, and we've shifted cars on,

having done all the work to them, and trying to get our money back on that

has been very, very difficult.

I think we've taken a loss on a few cars, not a huge loss, but he likes taking a loss,

but so we've been really cautious that is this new stock profile right for us,

and we haven't, there are still a few cars with just might just need a service.

It needs a clean MOT, which we know is going to fly through,

but any major, major mechanical issues have been rectified.

So we're just not trying to drain the bank account this month,

getting all cars completely.

Tricky, isn't it? It's a tricky balance.

Sam, you've been on the podcast before for those people, new listeners out there,

or those people watching on YouTube who probably watched you on YouTube too.

Tell those people who don't know you a little bit about your business,

and how you've set up and got to where you are now.

So yeah, I think it was about August last year that I decided to go and buy a car.

I had a bit of time in my hands and wanted to sort of dip my turn to the car industry,

and I sort of saw the tech side of the car industry maybe was a little bit backward,

and I came from a bit of a tech background,

and so I thought, right, I'm going to use some data,

and I think that's when I started watching your videos, James.

I started using them data and literally bought my first few cars purely on data,

and then they sold very, very quick, and I thought this can't be as easy as this, surely.

Believe me, I then started getting some right old dogs in,

but I was trading out of my driveway,

and then by October I took on this barn office, converted barn,

and the landlord had a load of a few car parking spaces,

and I said, well, look, can we have a few more car parking spaces?

And he went, what are you going to do?

I said, I'm going to sell really nice cars.

And he went, all right then.

So we literally had this office space, which was £500 a month,

and we've got about space for about 25 cars here.

Wow.

Yeah, so this is rural Devon.

It's not on a main road, and I was thinking, do we need to be on a main road?

I don't think we really do.

It would help, but because we thought, well, everything's online.

People are going to find us online as long as they know where we are.

That's absolutely fine.

So we've just gone on that way.

And then we had an absolute stormer of the beginning of the year,

over just after Christmas, January, February, March,

actually screened through there, shifted lots of cars,

and then come June this year, we started,

June was an unlucky month, and we started to get,

they're like buses all coming at once, coming back with big issues,

timing chains breaking on cars of 40,000 miles on the clocks.

Cars, you just wouldn't expect these issues to be happening.

And it was just one after the other after the other.

And that was the point where it was like, right, we soldier through this.

We've just got to get it, we've got to get these sorted out.

And we did, but that went on for a couple of months at least,

trying to sort them out, keep them, the customers happy.

We were loaning customers cars to keep them happy,

which is looking back at it a really bad thing to be doing,

because it takes your cars out of stock.

All these things I want to do to try and make the customer happy,

because there is this thing in the industry that every Cardi is out there

to leg you over and leave you in the lurch and on the side of the road.

I didn't want to run the business that way.

So, yeah, it was a really tricky June, July, August.

I went away in September, and then came back and then we're restocking.

Yeah, so it's been a difficult back end of 2025,

but that hence we change all our stock profile and just keeping an eye on things.

I mean, during the whole year, we have literally tested everything.

We've had some high-end cars in.

We've had some bottom of the range cars.

We've had everything in between with advertising.

We have tried absolutely everything.

We've had the biggest package on AutoTrader.

We've had motors. We've had car gurus.

We've adjusted the packages to suit the vehicles we've got in stock.

So we've gone and advertised at trade shows, the Devon County show.

We spent a lot of money doing that.

We bought in a racing simulator to help us on the stand with that, which was great fun.

So we have literally flown into it in year one.

And, you know, always have to take a seat.

So when we started our business, we looked at the data and we still do,

and we still stick to it rigidly.

It's been a little bit harder.

Now we're doing quite a few imports.

You have to sort of cross-reference the imported cars with equivalent UK models

to try and make sure you're buying the right sort of stock.

But we've stuck to that really carefully.

And I mean, AutoTrader has certainly helped us with that.

I mean, the retail ratings are pretty much our Bible, really.

Have you said you started the business like that and it worked really well?

Have you drifted away from that?

Have you stopped using it?

Are you now buying cars using gut feeling?

I mean, what is the way?

How do you stock your business?

Well, we started having cars that are hanging around on the forecourt for quite some time

on cars that should have been shifting within 20 days.

And we're also finding those cars getting devalued by AutoTrader.

AutoTrader's valuation was, our stock was just decreasing in value by quite a lot.

So I was looking at that really carefully.

And then I was looking at other valuations outside of AutoTrader valuations.

And I was going, hang on a second.

We've got, let's say we had a discovery sport, for instance.

But we sell those cars like hotcakes down here.

We really do.

And, you know, in the cities where they're used a lot in, you know,

Exit of Plymouth, London, you know, the insurance and those cars have gone sky high.

The demand for those have gone down.

The value of those goes down.

But people want them in rural Devon down here.

We'd normally have about three of those cars in stock at any one time.

And we would sell them within two or three weeks.

Brilliant cars.

Yeah, they do have their issues.

But over the period of time, we'd learned how to buy the right ones.

And we knew that we were buying a car with a problem.

So that was okay.

And we'd fix it.

And we'd know how much it was going to cost to fix.

That's all about having the margin.

So we started testing a few other ways of buying cars and selling them

and advertising them at the price that we felt was right for that car for our area

and getting to know what our customers want down here

and what they are prepared to pay for it.

We're not trying to leg customers over.

We're just trying to get a fair price for that car.

So we were advertising cars outside of AutoTrader, advertising them on our website.

What would be a high price on AutoTrader?

But customers are seeing them as a good price, fair price here.

So we were getting greater margin for our vehicles.

So then, of course, that makes you think,

gosh, well, we're selling cars outside of AutoTrader.

We're selling them for more.

And we're paying AutoTrader.

I think we're paying them 2,500 pounds a month at that point.

Do we really need this?

So do we ramp up everything on our site, optimize it,

and maybe have a presence with the car gurus and the motors?

And so I then started redesigning my site.

Then as I started redesigning it, I started to build on it, add bits and bobs,

and then I started to create a platform which now is a full-on DMS platform,

which is designed to sort of help new car dealers coming into the industry

and young car dealers with all the tools they need to be able to advertise the cars

and to promote themselves in a way that, I mean, the site comes with a personalized website

that they have.

It's your usual upload your car with all your systems on it

and all the invoicing and everything else like that.

So I built this platform purely on the back end of what I was finding was working for us.

And we are a small car dealership and we need to make money

and we need to watch our overheads, specifically our advertising spend.

And having a think about what's going to happen next,

how are we all going to be searching for cars later on down the line?

And then looking at the SEO side of things on a website

and actually really now how important that is,

because we don't just need to optimize for Google and Bing and what have you,

we need to optimize for these AI browsers that are now coming in

because soon our way of searching for cars is, I think, completely going to change.

So have you dropped AutoTrader altogether?

Yeah, we've completely pulled away from AutoTrader altogether.

And how are your leads as a result of that and where are they coming from?

Well, last December they were pretty quiet.

But if we're looking back this time last year,

I'd say we were spending £2,500 a month on AutoTrader

and we were getting no leads this time.

And yeah, well, we're saving £2,500 a month at the moment compared to last year.

We're with CarGurus. CarGurus have been very good for us.

The platform advertises our stock onto Facebook.

It also sends feeds out to Google Ads.

So the platform is all integrated with Google Ads as well.

So I manage that in-house.

And hitting the locals hard.

We have banners outside Morrison's, which is free.

We've partnered with the local Topnes food bank

where £50 for every car sold goes to help feed a family in the area.

So that's all plastered over Morrison's.

Morrison's have been great. They're not charging us for it.

A massive banner. You can't miss it when you go in.

So it's getting eyes on the brand, which doesn't just help sell the cars.

We now get people saying, look, will you buy my car as well?

So it sort of works both ways.

So we're trying, we're in all the little local magazines,

the guides, the Topnes Times, the Southam's directory, all that sort of stuff,

which is an expensive, it's cheap advertising.

Local advertising is fairly cheap.

So when it comes to picking stock, how do you choose the right stuff?

Is it a case, how do you know whether it's going to be popular or not?

Is it down to gut feeding now?

Or do you just stick to the stuff that has always worked for you and that's your wheelhouse?

Yeah, I mean, obviously everything that's worked for us in the past is always on our radar.

But also changing our stock profile slightly, a lot of it is gut feeding,

a huge amount of it is gut feeding.

So little small automatics down here will fly.

They fly and we can get good prices for them.

So we know that difficult to get hold of.

But that's when we get offered cars, locally, little Honda Jazzes,

the Yeti that came in the other day, which we bought great cars, really great cars.

So auction wise, we haven't bought an auction for some time now.

I think I had a call from Mannheim saying, Sam, are you all right?

Because we were there every week buying five or six cars.

And now we haven't bought from auction for a couple of months.

And that's because the stock comes to you?

The stock comes to us.

We make use of virtually every part of the exchange that comes in,

because literally down here, there is a car for everyone.

There really is.

So if it's an old Peugeot 207 banger, we'll make it a banger for someone.

We'll get it right, we'll fix it up, we'll buy it at the right price, hopefully.

And yeah, we will sell it for a good margin.

So a lot of it now is gut feeling.

Looking at the margin, less so than the retail rating,

but we don't have access to that now.

I mean, the platform does have access to, you know, how popular the car may be.

But, you know, it's all down to how you photograph it,

where you're based, what you like and all that sort of stuff.

So we look at the valuations more than anything,

and our gut feeling of whether that's suitable for our customers down here.

Are you still enjoying it?

Yeah, I mean, short answer, yes,

certainly not throwing the towel in,

but there have certainly been times where I've gone,

yeah, I can't cope with this anymore.

There have been times where I've literally headed my hands going,

you know, I'm doing my very best, and it's always when a customer has an issue.

That's the biggest problem, because the customers, you do everything for them,

and then they go, I've just had to spend £200 on my car,

because this has gone wrong, you know, three, four months down the line.

And it's all your fault.

I mean, I even gave a car to my mother, because she needed a car.

And then I said, hi, hi, mum, how's the car?

Well, it was fine until I had to spend £400 on it last weekend.

I was like, don't you start.

So, yeah, times like that are endless.

So in June, July, as I mentioned before, when we were having that tricky period,

yeah, it was like, is this the right industry for me?

And you do a lot of YouTube videos, don't you?

They sort of seem to come out in series.

I love following them.

Does it help having that outlet to talk to people that just might be in a similar situation?

Do you find it cathartic?

Yeah, I mean, I do, as you know, James, it's very difficult to document stuff,

especially when things are stressful and you've got to spend time sorting it out

and your head's in the wrong place.

And often when you pick up the camera, you don't want to be doing it

when, you know, a whole load of crap's in your mind,

because you think you're going to come across as being boring, dull or anything like that.

But I have tried to document it all.

And some videos have been pretty glum, but explaining what the situation is.

And they're probably the most popular videos, to be honest.

But no, I love doing the videos because it gets me away from the screen.

We did do the weekly videos.

We now stopped doing those slightly, but we might bring those back.

But it was great to sort of not vent, but explain.

It's so useful doing that because people give their feedback and input

and that feedback is actually great.

There's some really good switched on traders out there that watch these videos

and everyone sort of puts their, there's some ugly useless comments, obviously.

But there are some, you just got to pick them out.

But some of them are really good and useful.

You know, if we've got a car that we're not particularly familiar with

and we've got an issue with it, then we'll have someone, you know.

So we'll try this, maybe do that and we do and it's useful.

And also we buy a lot of cars through subscribers as well.

Yeah, I certainly enjoy doing them.

I do find it a nice workplace, like you say, to vent.

And sometimes you need that when you're running a small business, don't you?

What advice would you give to people thinking about following in your footsteps?

Well, I think back in the day, I think the best, the thing that we always felt we needed to do

was to jump in and get an auto trader package.

It was like, we've got to join the big boys.

We've got to advertise.

We've got to go in the best places.

I would say, no, you don't need to do that.

If you're starting off on a driveway or something like that,

start turning the cars over in the cheapest possible way.

Get to know your customers and also the stock that is going to work in your area.

Don't suddenly just go and fly with an auto trader package or anything like that.

So really keep those overheads down.

And don't be afraid of your gut feeling.

When you go in initially and you want to sort of analyze all the data,

you can get analysis paralysis and you can actually not go ahead and buy that car.

But if you think that car is right and you think your customers are going to buy it,

it's within budget, the margins there, go for it.

Just go for it.

And you'll only learn because that car may have a bit of an issue.

You'll learn how to fix it.

Maybe specialize in a certain range of cars.

I wouldn't say we specialize, but we started having a lot of the discovery sports on.

They worked really well for us.

They were really good margins.

Yes, they had problems, but we knew what problems they were.

And we started stocking quite a few of them.

I find it incredibly addictive.

For me, I really like the simplicity of car sales.

And by that, I mean you find a car, you buy the car, you fix it up a bit and you sell the car.

It is very, very basic business.

And as long as you sell the car for more than you bought it for,

you're in profit and hopefully things work out.

And I think there's a lot of joy to be had in finding something

that other people can't and selling it for a little bit more money.

I mean, we've had a Saab 93 that we've had up for auction, John.

It's done very, very well.

But that was just, it fell into our lap and we've done well as a result.

So for those people out there who like the sound of that,

would you recommend this industry as something people should get into

or haven't had the experiences you've had over the last few years?

Do you warn people off it?

Well, I mean, I'd like to say I'm a bit of a fair weather car salesman

or a car dealer, should I say.

I should be going out there and changing discs and pads.

I should be there doing a lot of things.

If your hands on, you can save a lot of money.

You can save a huge amount of money.

And if you don't mind the running around and all that sort of,

the running around drives me up the wall.

And also, I don't know how to replace a set of brake discs yet.

So, I'm more focused behind the screens.

So, I mean, that's the whole idea of why I built that platform

is that for people who are going to go into the business,

they are hands on that this platform will take care of everything

on the side.

So, yeah, I can recommend it depending on what your strengths

and your weaknesses are, definitely.

Yeah, I don't know where I sit on the recommendation front.

I think it sort of depends where you are in life

and what you want to get out of it.

Because for some people, I just don't think it's right

because it is hard.

I'm very lucky that I'm running it as a side hustle,

you know, in inverted course.

You know, I do get paid for doing this, you know.

So, I'm very lucky in the fact that it doesn't need to pay the mortgage.

But I think if it was going to be paying my mortgage,

I would find it far, far more stressful than I do at the moment.

I don't think I would do it.

Yeah, well, you've now got 32 or so cars, James.

I mean, you've just ramped right up your straight,

well, Joe's stress levels anyway.

Well, yeah, exactly.

He's on holiday, so like he is.

Of course he is.

And here's me, Joe, come on out.

So, yeah, of course, it's not for everyone.

It's not for everyone at all.

I mean, I think there are a lot of the older generation

getting into it at the moment.

You know, they've sort of got their jobs

and then they sort of want to create something with their son.

He's a car fanatic and they do it together.

It makes sense if you can do it with another person, obviously,

because you can share the stress and chat about stuff.

Doing it alone, I think it's really, really difficult.

Really difficult. You started alone, didn't you, James?

Yeah, I found it very, very, very hard as a result.

But, you know, mentally very challenging.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, I kind of started it myself,

but then Michelle jumped in with me.

That was great, you know, it really helped.

So, yeah, I mean, having someone you can do it with

and just share that, vent to each other, vent to YouTube,

vent to, you know, your computer screen or whatever, say.

Yeah, it's not for everyone.

No. Sam, plug time.

You've mentioned this platform a few times,

but there'll be people listening to this who probably want to hear some more.

So, opportunity to let them know where to find details.

All right. Well, Carbotix. Yeah, carbotix.co.uk.

How do you spell that?

C-A-R-B-O-T-I-X.

Got you.

Carbotix.co.uk.

So, as I said, yeah, I created it, not by accident at all,

but I just, as my journey went on, knowing what I need as a car trader

starting up in the trade, not wanting to go to the expense of advertising,

although it does link in with all auto traders and the motors and the car guries.

It's a platform where, you know, you can have a personalized website,

you can upload your stock and everything like a normal DMS system would do,

but in addition to that, it's got, you know, auction valuation, buying tools,

maximum bid tools, it's got a trade-to-trade portal,

so if you've got a car that is hanging around,

you can put it into trade and it will go to all the other dealers on the system.

It's got this, it's got an SEO studio and we've linked up with, well,

AFFs, which is now SEO ranking, so that's not all integrated into the platform.

So, all pages, including vehicle pages, can be analyzed in great depth

and optimized with a few clicks of the button.

And we've got ChatGPT in the system as well that will...

ChatGPT is more of a copywriter, not a source for data.

The data needs to come from pure facts and that's why we've got SEO ranking integrated

and then ChatGPT picks up all of that information

and then helps really optimize a page for, you know, a particular car.

And we've got Content Studio as well, so articles,

dealers can actually create articles and have them on their site,

so that's all really important stuff to help build a website

and make it, you know, really well optimized in your area

because that's all going to help people in their area search

and will maybe save them an advertising package or two.

So, there are new features coming out all the time

and it's a platform where dealers, if they've got a request for a feature,

I'll build the feature, you know, I'll integrate it in.

It's that simple, you know, it's, do you want this?

Do you not want that?

And we have a WhatsApp group where we're all on it,

so there's a support group as well.

So, and everyone's, you know, we chat about various bits of the industry and everything.

It would be great if we can have an, have this on, brilliant.

Okay, by the end of the week it's done.

As if, as if you didn't have enough on your hands.

Well, during that, during the June, July, it was like, right, box to this.

I'm doing something else.

So, I've been creating this in the background.

Yeah, the cars have sort of been neglected in a way

because it's taken seven months or so to build it.

But it's now all up and running.

Dealers are all being on board and they're all, you know, our website at the moment,

that's on the platform.

And I wanted websites, I wanted the website to sort of display the right information

and also have AI in there as well.

So, when you go onto a car on, on any of the websites, there's an AI chat box at the boss,

and you can ask it anything about that car, MOT history, what's the,

and it will give you the information, how reliable is it, what are the normal issues with it.

It will feedback information because the idea is trying to keep the customer on that page

and give them as much information on the car as possible before they bugger off

and go and find a similar car.

So, it's got MOT history on it.

You know, a lot of car sites don't have MOT here.

Do you have MOT history on your?

Not on our site, no.

I mean, well, we, because we put a new MOT on most of our stuff, so.

Yeah, but I mean, everyone wants to see the MOT history of a car.

You may as well just put it there, show them.

Well, it sounds incredibly impressive, Sam.

Nice plug.

I'm sure people will follow it off the back of this podcast.

Thank you for joining us today, but I think, John, we should probably do some stories.

Now, a quick word from one of our sponsors.

John, have you ever wondered why I, along with 14,000 other dealers, choose to partner with Auto Trader?

Well, actually, I didn't think so.

I'll tell you anyway, with more than 84 million consumer visits every month,

it connects us with more engaged car buyers and delivers more deals than anyone else in the UK.

And now, with the launch of buying signals, we'll have brand new insights on every deal

showing how likely a customer is to buy the car they're interested in.

Plus, as someone who set out to use AI and data as much as possible in my business,

I've found their technology, data and tools genuinely invaluable.

But when I do get stuck, which is, let's face it, most of the time,

Auto Trader is always on hand and committed to supporting us to get the very best from our package.

To find out how they can help you, visit trade.autotrader.co.uk

This is a paid partnership in association with Dealerway.

John, guess what?

Oh, God, you've bought more ducks, haven't you?

No ducks, John. Wrong there. I've actually got a new habit.

I've signed up for Dealerway, alongside more than 2,500 other rated and vetted car dealers to sell my trade part exchanges.

The site is designed for dealers to sell their pie exchanges for more money quickly and easily.

There's no sellers fees and buying a car costs just £99, one of the cheapest around.

And when I haven't got the time to list the car myself, I can even watch out them the details and they do it all for me.

That sounds awfully familiar. So are you selling all your stock there now?

Not exactly, John, but if I do have a sudden influx of Kia Picantos, I know where to send them.

Dealers can find out more at dealerway.co.uk

Now, back to the podcast.

Yes, so James and I are going to run through our favourite stories of the week.

And at the end, Sam gets to decide which one of us chose the best ones and who is the winner.

I won last week, I think, because I talked about the Zipcar disappearing from the UK.

We did. Very sad news.

But I'm going to start with AutoTrader, which I think is probably the biggest story of the week.

And they're tweaks to DealBuilder.

So what they've done off the back of, I mean, do I have to go into all the DealBuilder furore?

I don't think I do.

But AutoTrader says it has listened to the feedback and it's had a play around with the system.

And so fundamentally from now on, there will always, I think, am I right in getting this right, James?

There will always be a reserve button there.

But the reserve system that's caused some consternation with some dealers

involving the £99 that AutoTrader takes and then the car is reserved,

that is optional for dealers to put on.

The other option is the customer can hit a button that says reserve

and it sends a reserve inquiry to the dealer and the dealer can then contact the customer and say,

great, you want to reserve your car, that's lovely, why do you want to do that?

And we will take a reservation fee of whatever we like.

And we can make it non-refundable if that's the case, like you do, James, et cetera, et cetera.

So I mean, that's a very short praisey of the story, but I'm going to hand it over to you, James,

because let me pose the question to you, James.

Do you think this has fixed the problem?

I think it has helped the situation.

I don't think it has fixed the problem completely, but what it has done is given dealers a little bit of choice.

And that choice is very important because that request to reservation means that for us,

people will be able to come into our system and into our sales journey,

where we have a conversation with them first.

I mean, my point on this is the cars that we sell are mostly sub £10,000 used cars

that people want to know everything about, but really importantly,

want to know everything about the dealer and the person they're buying from too.

It's very, very hard for someone to just go, actually, yeah, I love that car so much,

I'm happy to put a £99 reservation down without even meeting the person who's going to sell it to them.

And importantly, look after them when the problem goes wrong.

That needs a conversation.

I have had conversations with people on the phone who want to reserve a car after they've chatted to us

and after we've explained how we do business, explained how we look after people, how our warranties work.

But for them to do that on another platform in advance of buying the car, I just can't see it happening.

So we will certainly be going down the request to reservation route.

We won't be doing the reservation on AutoTrader because it means that we can talk to them and explain how we do things.

And I think my gut feeling is most dealers will probably be the same.

And it really will be up to AutoTrader to prove that these customers want to reserve on AutoTrader's platform rather than ours.

So I do think it helps that some of the dealers that I've spoken to this week feel better about it,

but they're still not that happy.

There are other issues afoot that the customers having to sign into the platform to submit an inquiry that happened from the end of September onwards

is still causing people some problems.

There are still some dealers are not happy about that because they think leads are down.

It's hard to tell at this time of year.

We've already talked about the fact December is quiet and normally is.

So it will be interesting to see how this pans out in the first quarter of next year and see whether it does fix things.

So yeah, a long answer to your very short question, John.

That was a very good answer. Thank you, James.

I'm going to hand it over to Sam as another dealer, but of course, Sam, you're not on AutoTrader.

But what have you made of this situation?

Well, we were an AutoTrader.

One of the reasons why we stepped away was just having a bit more control.

I don't want customers reserving cars without talking to me.

This is a two-way transaction.

We want to speak to them. We want to educate them about the car and all that sort of stuff.

That's another reason why we don't have an AI chatbot on our website.

We want to speak to them.

And I think it's great that AutoTrader have done something to try and please the dealers, keep them on, you know, retain their customers.

But I don't think it's enough.

I don't think it's enough.

And listening to various podcasts and James, you're one with the CEO.

You know, how they've tested this in the past to make a decision that this is the right direction.

They're saying that DealBuilder is one of the biggest and the best features that they're bringing out in AutoTrader.

Well, it doesn't really seem to be.

And we're not saying the proof.

So, yeah, I'm a bit of a control freak, and I really like to engage with my customers.

And I want to be the one speaking to them and from the get-go.

Yeah. I mean, this came off the back of a meeting with journalists on Monday.

There was a Christmas get-together where Nathan Coe, the CEO, was chatted to journalists, us included, Jack Williams went up there.

And they obviously talked about DealBuilder at length.

And Nathan said he was, I quote, surprised and hurt by the level of criticism.

Excuse me, the level of criticism the firm had received in the wake of the DealBuilder rollout.

But he said he'd welcome the constructive feedback dealers had given the firm.

He did say he thinks it's one of the best products AutoTrader has launched as he mentioned this.

So, I mean, it's an interesting one, really, isn't it?

He's clearly very much focused on DealBuilder, thinks that it is the future of buying cars.

But I think the problem that they have is a large part of the trade don't agree.

No. I mean, it's like with any new product that any business brings out, look at the feedback and react.

They're looking at the feedback, but I don't think they're doing enough.

As I say, their research was saying that this is the best thing to do for the customer and the dealer.

As you say, if you request the customer to start logging in and signing up to a platform, that's an immediate barrier.

It's an immediate barrier versus click, call, does.

I mean, what is wrong with that? I mean, maybe it's just a case with, we're all just trying to be too clever now.

We're trying to make everything really cool and easy and efficient for everyone.

And that, that in this case, I think is all starting to backfire.

It's not, there's too many barriers.

I've been thinking about this a lot this week, John, and actually I've written for my substack that's coming out today.

What I would do if I was the CEO of AutoStrade, I just thought I'd just have a little think about what my plan would be.

What would I do if I sat in Nathan's chair?

I won't give it all away because it's obviously in the substack.

You know, one of them was, it was obviously about deal builder and I just think I would just make it completely optional

and just let those dealers that want to go back to the way they had it before have it the way they had it before.

You know, it's what their customers want.

And I think that's important when you're charging dealers a lot of money to listen to them and let them choose how they want to use the platform too.

I think my biggest issue with this and I think the motor trades is the fact that it was mandatory and it has become mandatory.

And I think really when you run your own business as an entrepreneur, you run your own, your own used car site,

you should have a bit of choice in how you transact with customers.

Because personally, I don't think reserving in advance of seeing the car is the right way to do it.

No, I don't think either.

You know, traders are auto traders customers at the end of the day.

But the whole point of the deal builder, I think is more weighted over to the consumer and trying to please them.

Yeah, right. I'm going to move us on, move us away from auto trade and pick my first story.

I'm going to pick a story that came out quite late on Friday last week, which is obviously after we recorded the podcast,

but I think it's a very important one and it was just, I don't think I've ever seen a situation like this come out in the press.

And this is Volvo canceling a dealer's contract with a major effect after it moved into a temporary showroom.

So this is the Brindley group who operate Volvo or did operate Volvo in Wolverhampton.

Now, they'd been issued with a two year notice period from the Swedish car manufacturer because their chairman said they refused to sell the dealership to the brand's preferred bidder.

Now, the site obviously had been operating for two years for Volvo, but they were coming towards the end of that two year period.

They had six months left and at that point in time, the dealer group needs to decide what it's going to do next and how it's going to continue to do business.

So it had decided to take on Cherry as a new partner for the group and needed to renovate the Volvo showroom as a result.

So as part of that, it moved Volvo into temporary accommodation.

Now, this is very normal, they say, when you're renovating a showroom, but Volvo took immediate exception to this and they issued the business with a termination, which was effective immediately.

The chairman, Che Watson said in a very detailed social media post, which basically gave away pretty much all of it.

He said, we decided to relocate our growing Hyundai business and to begin a new partnership with Cherry who will operate from the former Hyundai showroom and to support these changes, both the building's required modification, he said.

The work began in late November and during the construction, we continued to operate the Volvo business in temporary accommodation.

It's standard practice, he said, but Volvo took exception to this arrangement and issued an immediate termination.

We did speak to Volvo about what they had to say about this.

They issued a very vanilla statement saying Volvo remains committed to delivering high standards of service and care that our customers expect, and it said it's going to be looking for a new partner in the area.

The row didn't stop there though, John, as part of this statement, Che Watson said that any customer who'd ordered a Volvo from them and wanted to cancel their order,

he would do them a very special deal on a new car from one of his other brands.

He said, I'm happy to offer any alternative car in our portfolio at cost price.

I mean, talk about stick the knife in.

So yeah, it's very unusual to see a story like this erupt into the public and clearly two businesses there who have been at loggerheads for a while.

But yeah, interesting to see how it's how it's boiled over.

What do you think? Did you see it, John?

I did see it. I mean, you have to forgive me because I'm slightly out of the loop.

But yeah, I was trying to get my head around this because as they say, it's not unusual to operate your site from one that's, you know, one that's going undergoing construction.

Because I mean, lots of, if you were to take on a new Volvo franchise tomorrow, James, and you went down the road and you found a nice facility that was a former Peugeot dealer or whatever,

you could start selling those cars before all your C.I. was in place for Volvo, could you not?

Because I, you know, I'm sure I think it might have been John O'Hanlon was saying when they started, they were operating fundamentally out of a port cabin and a, you know, construction zone for their Volvo sites.

This is clearly not to do with, unless Volvo's policies have changed dramatically in the last three years, I don't think it's to do with the construction element.

It's something else, isn't it? Like they've clearly fallen out.

Yeah, yeah, which is disappointing.

But there we are. I mean, who knows, maybe it doesn't sound like Volvo trying to get rid of a franchise in that area because they're trying to pass it on somebody else.

What was this situation with the two year notice period because, so as Volvo said to Bradley, we don't want you to represent us anymore.

Yeah, I mean, most franchises operate on a two year termination notice.

So at the point in time where they said they wouldn't sell it to their preferred bidder, the manufacturers preferred bidder, they were obviously issued this termination notice.

And I think at that point in time, they can give it to whoever they want, that franchise to whoever they want in the area.

But yeah, interesting to see it all boil over though, isn't it? And just be so public.

Sam, did you see the story?

I didn't, but I didn't see the story at all.

But it's just, I don't like it at all.

It's all shame because that just then starts affecting everyone.

But, you know, to hand to give them to give them notice and tell them to go and then also, as you say, to tell all the customers that if they want to hand their car back, they can do.

Slight PR disaster there for Volvo.

We'll park it there, John. We'll park it there. You move us on.

Absolutely. And I just like to balance out the coverage of Volvo.

I just like to show you this excellent Japanese Volvo magazine that I bought to go with my lovely long term Volvo EX 30 series.

I mean, that is proof that in Japan they will do a magazine on literally anything.

They absolutely will. It's very in depth actually.

Anyway, I'm going to move us on to talk about a different car maker now, which is Ford.

Because they've come out with some surprising news this week, which is that they will be borrowing Renault's electric underpinnings for some of their cars going forwards.

So they're going to borrow the platform that's underneath the Renault 5 and the Alpine A290 and the Renault 4.

And of course, the Nissan Micra and whatever else other cars are on this particular platform to underpin some future Ford electric cars.

And, you know, there's lots of the usual PR wonderfulness of, oh, it's great to be teaming up with Renault and Renault saying, oh, it's great to be teaming up with a powerhouse like Ford.

And of course, magazines are all to express your former employer, James, have gone to town with this and started rendering the new Fiesta is coming.

And I mean, it probably is because that is small electric car platform.

So it does look a bit like we're going to have a French Franco American tiny electric Ford Fiesta car.

Now, like Ford says, this is going to be very different to a Renault.

They say it's going to have, all right, it's going to be made in a French factory alongside the Renault 5 and so on, this forthcoming small car.

And it's going to drive like a Ford and it will look like a Ford and so on.

I'm not entirely sure about that as to how that will work in reality.

I think it will still feel a bit Renault-y.

But it won't be here until 2028, which is some time away.

So I kind of, I think, well, it's interesting as a story because clearly Ford, like other car makers are going, there's lots of Chinese cars coming.

We haven't really got our brains in gear to the electric bit.

I think Ford have had their fingers burned on electric cars because the Capri and the Explorer.

Explorer? Yes, the Explorer.

They built this, you know, they shut down production of lots of popular Ford models in Europe to concentrate on making these two cars.

They've not exactly been a runaway sales success across Europe.

I think they're doing OK in the UK, but not brilliantly on the rest of the continent.

And then I think they've kind of dawdled a bit because no new products have come out since those two cars were announced.

And we're going to have to wait another two years before these were two and a bit years until these new cars arrive.

I don't know, James, it just seems a little bit slow and a bit reactionary this.

Well, I mean, I thought the interesting quote on this was in the Financial Times from Ford CEO Jim Farley.

And he said, we're in the fight for our lives and our industry.

And there is no better example than here in Europe.

And he was referencing those Chinese carmakers and the threat that they pose to these established players like Ford and Renault here in Europe.

I think this is clearly proof that there is a very difficult situation for these established carmakers.

They're going to struggle with these Chinese players coming in with the cheap products that they're doing.

And if they don't do these sort of collaborations, then they're not going to survive.

And this is proof of that.

They needed to do it.

And Ford, let's face it, desperately needed help.

They haven't got enough products.

They're losing dealers left, right and centre.

They're absolutely shedding market share.

They needed the help.

So hopefully this will do it.

I just wonder if it's going to be too late.

I mean, I should say also Renault are getting something out of this arrangement, apart from, you know, more cars going down the production line, the factory they own.

They've also said they're going to share, they're going to collaborate on LCVs like commercial vehicles, which of course is the one thing that Ford does quite well in Europe and makes quite a bit of money off.

It's really supporting the rest of their business.

So perhaps we'll see some Ford based Renault vans coming out in the not too distant future, who knows.

Sam, what do you make of this?

Well, I think they're taking their time.

It was in 2028.

I mean, a lot can happen between now and then.

And we've got God knows how many electric cars tied up in leases with businesses and they're all going to be coming to the end of their leases and then going into the market.

There's going to be a lot of electric cars being bought at quite reasonable prices soon.

I mean, James, do you know what the ratio is between new cars being bought by private individuals versus businesses?

Have you got that data?

Not to hand, but it's definitely in the SMMT figures every month.

But I mean, fleet users definitely outweigh retail buyers every month.

So, I mean, whether we're going to see those come into the second hand car market and I just think it might, it's a long time.

I'd be a bit concerned.

Maybe the French, whether the French need to stop taking their two hour lunch breaks and then speak up a bit by six months or so.

Can I just throw in one more bit of corporate tittle-tattle on this?

Like those cars that I've mentioned, the Capri and the Explorer, both quite famously Volkswagen based products, same platform as the ID for an ID 3.

Volkswagen has an ID 2 coming out that they've been shouting about for quite some time.

Why is Ford not borrowing the underpinnings from that?

I wonder if Ford and VW or Ford perhaps not very happy with the VW products they've been getting.

I don't know. I can't see why.

And you know, there's a big collaboration between Ford and VW.

Ford and VW vans already exist.

Why are they not doing the same thing for those cars?

The smaller platform?

I have no answer for you, John.

So I'm going to move us on.

My last story I'd just like to wedge in is about Cox, BCA and Aston Barkley.

So this is Cox Automotive warning the CMA, the Competition Markets Authority,

that Constellation's acquisition of Aston Barkley could hand their rival BCA an unfair dominance in the auction market.

In a Phase II submission, Cox has rejected claims that Aston Barkley was a failing firm,

which was mentioned in all of BCA's submissions to the CMA.

And they quoted senior staff, this is Cox quoting senior staff from Aston Barkley,

who had called 2024 a strong year.

It said the deal removes a key competitor and challenged the assertions made by Constellation,

highlighting Aston Barkley's unique scale and influence.

So the CMA's investigation is continuing to this with a preliminary decision due in January 2026.

But I fear that this one's not over, John.

I think Cox is clearly not very happy about this collaboration and unsurprisingly so.

They're trying to protect their manhine business, aren't they?

But BCA buying this Aston Barkley.

I mean, it was announced quite some time ago, the CMA investigations obviously delayed things quite drastically.

It would be interesting to see whether it actually goes through.

What do you think?

Yeah, I mean, just to translate some of the legalese there.

I mean, effectively, Mannheim is saying, well, one of the things Mannheim is saying is that in,

I don't know which report there or CMA submission or whatever they're referring to,

but they're counteracting a submission that said Cox is an enormous, you know, Mannheim is an enormous business.

And their point is well, yeah, OK, Cox Automotive is big worldwide,

but Mannheim is not actually that enormous here in the UK.

So, you know, we're not talking about their point is it's not here's BCA and here's Mannheim at the same level.

And here's Aston Barkley down here in the minnows of the auction world in the UK.

It's actually saying, well, no, Aston Barkley is a big player.

And if BCA comes and snaps them up, you are going to create this enormous beast.

And there's no one really rivaling them in terms of size.

So it's interesting to see a company saying, actually, we Mannheim are not as big as you might think.

And Aston Barkley actually is quite a successful company, sort of the opposite of normal PR in a way, isn't it?

That you're picking up your rivals slightly.

I mean, Cox had said in this that they didn't believe Aston Barkley had pursued any options when it came to sales

and said that if the Constellation deal hadn't happened, it probably would have explored selling sites separately.

So I think they're just a little bit annoyed that the way that they were just, Aston Barkley was snapped up.

Because I think Aston Barkley had been saying that they needed to do the deal because of their situation.

But Cox has gone back into reports showing that Aston Barkley said they were doing incredibly well.

So yeah, like you say, a bit of tittle-tattle here, but you never know what's going to happen in January.

Because it's difficult for Cox at the moment, isn't it?

I mean, they own AutoTrader, isn't it?

Is AutoTrader known by Cox?

I think they used to have some form.

I think Cox used to own Motors, didn't they?

They did.

Cox used to own Motors.

How was it?

I think they own AutoTrader.com, possibly, just to confuse things, which is a different entity.

Yeah, maybe that's why I was looking at it.

It's like, oh, Christ, what Cox is involved with that?

Well, that's my last story, John.

So I think you could probably find out who the winner is, maybe.

So, Sam, before I ask for your verdict, are there any stories you think we've missed this week?

Oh, well, there was a couple of stories, I read.

It was a lovely little, it's a slightly sad story.

It's closures of dealerships, a VW dealership in,

where is it, family run business, and it's been going for years of shut the doors,

and VW are now looking to try and source other, you know, try and find another business

to sort of take on the, trying to think whereabouts it was.

Doncaster.

Was it Doncaster?

Doncaster.

Do you know the name of it, James?

Hailston.

That's it, that's it.

That was it, that was it.

And there was a big backlash saying, you know, we've been done over and all that sort of stuff,

but, you know, as a business, as a business, if you're insolvent, you can't trade.

It's illegal to trade.

You have, if it's before Christmas, or is it right, right in the middle of summer,

there's never a good time for that.

There's never a good time to go into administration, but you have to by law do it.

So I feel strongly for the employees why they went into administration is,

you know, they're good strong branded cars, you know, VW, Skoda, what's going on, what went wrong?

Yeah, I mean somebody texted me off the back of that and said they hadn't heard of a Volkswagen

or Skoda dealer going into administration for 25 years.

So I think they are, they're the sort of brands that don't normally end up in that way.

So something clearly gone very wrong there.

Yeah.

So, so yeah, that's that was that sort of strong accord with me that this this week reading about,

you know, poor chap's been done over before Christmas, well done over, but unfortunately having to lose their jobs.

Yeah, very unfortunate.

But of the stories that we've mentioned.

Well, well, I mean, when you started John with auto chairs, like, you know what, I don't know.

I don't care how good this story is, it ain't going to make the cut.

Then we swung over to James.

We swung over to James.

It was like, okay, let's see what's going on here.

And then we went back over to John and I'm, and I'm afraid James.

The most interesting one for me is John's story about of what, because I'm very interested in what's going to happen with over the next two years.

Is it going to be too late?

What's going to happen with technology over the next two years?

I don't want to interrupt, but I think I've got an earthquake happening at the moment.

Are you really?

Yes.

Have you really?

The building's wobbling.

Sorry, carry on.

Do you need to evacuate?

No, no, my phone's not doing anything.

I'm on the ninth floor, so this is slightly concerning.

Carry on.

This is the first of the people.

Right, John.

I think, well, John, I mean, if you know, if the building does collapse, good news is you've won.

I will have to take it.

Oh, well.

You need to wrap things up just in case you do need to get out of your little room.

Yeah.

Well, on that very strange note, well, thank you to Sam for coming on and talking about your business today and letting me win, which is a pleasure.

Nice to see you, Sam.

Best of luck with all of those endeavors.

Thanks so much.

Take care, Chaps.

And thank you as well to James for joining us from his padded cell.

And thank you for listening.

We'll be back next week with another episode.

So make sure you're subscribed so you can be notified when that goes live.

If you want to check out the stories you mentioned today, take a look in the show notes below.

We'll head to CardiTheMagazine.co.uk.

We didn't talk about Cardi Live, James.

No, we mentioned it last week, but, you know, if you want tickets, CardiLive.co.uk on early bird until the end of the year.

Yes.

So get on it.

Thanks for listening and goodbye.

Auto Trader tweaks Deal Builder, Ford teams up with Renault, and Volvo's falling out with Brindley Group – with Sam Watts, episode 235

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