Mike Brewer On Closing His Dealership, Wheeler Dealers Cast & UK Car Market

With Mike Brewer Motors, that hadn't been paid.

We were staring at how we're going to pay the wages.

Everything just went up.

As it's increased, you see your profit margin

starts going to negative.

It's unsustainable.

We just couldn't make it work.

So how do you back up?

Yes, go be that car dealer.

Wheel of Dealers is the longest running motoring show.

Most watched as well.

Has it been difficult to deal with the new personality coming in?

When Ed decided to go, it was very easy for Ed to come and join.

Still, people out there tell me, you know,

you've backstabbing bastards you should have given up back then.

Why should I give up? Could somebody have left these jobs?

Is there much left to do?

In Wheel of Dealer World, isn't it good to end on a high

rather than just keep going until you've just become a husband?

Some of the comments that you've had to deal with over your career

have been seriously, seriously difficult.

When people come up to you and say, I hope you die of cancer.

So my final question, any regrets?

Do I have any regrets?

Mike, we are two months into 2026.

Not only are you back again,

but this is the point where most people quit their New Year's resolution.

In fact, only 9% of people make it past the end of February.

And if there's people out there that decided this was the year

that they think that they're born dealer as well,

then it's time to become a car dealer.

What would you say to them?

Yes, go for it.

That's what I'd say to them.

And as for New Year's resolutions, I did wet jangry,

did join a gym again,

and my New Year's resolution as it is every year

is just to try and make it the best year possible, have a load of fun.

And you seem to do that because no matter how many times

I come back and talk to you with 365 days in between,

something has always happened.

We had a viral reel from our last conversation

about how you were so buzzing to do a car in Brazil,

the VW Porsche collaboration.

Tick done.

We're back at one automotive.

It's twice the size. Tick done.

We had Mike Brewer live with Chiro at Bista.

Tick done.

And there's so much more to unpack from today's conversation.

But aside from all the good,

there's also been some big challenges over the last year

that we've got to talk about.

But you said go for it if they want to become a car dealer.

And only 26 is so much negativity around dealerships closing down,

people struggling to sell stock.

Why should people still go for it?

Because the car trade is still a fantastic place to be.

You know, it's an amazing business.

If you get it right and do it right,

it is still rewards to be had.

And yes, it's a challenge.

You know, I've faced lots of challenges myself

in running sizeable car dealerships.

And it's not easy. It's not for everyone.

But if somebody's got the tenacity, they've got the energy,

they think that they can do the job properly,

there's no reason why they shouldn't have a go.

Yes, they are going to face a lot of challenges along the way.

But if you tune it and get it right,

the rewards will be very, very handsome.

There's many people out there that have obviously publicised,

either via TV, no one bigger than yourself,

when it comes to being the wheeler dealer,

the car dealer on television.

But there's also the YouTubers like Calvin's Car Diary,

Shifting Metal, I've seen Wolf of Cars

start up and do really well.

Do you think that being successful in 2026 as a dealer,

you have to enter that life

of putting the life of your dealer on camera?

Well, listen, you can't go in a coffee shop with a barista,

not showing you how they make a coffee these days.

So almost everyone wants to be a YouTube star on Instagram

or some kind of sensation online.

So it seems to just go into territory.

Almost every car dealer I know at the moment is doing videos

to promote their business online.

Everyone's turning themselves into a wannabe TV presenter

or a YouTube presenter and influencer to try and do it.

And they should do, you know, this is a medium at all, a weapon,

to help you get sales and to drive your brand

and your product to market.

And you are reaching people in a way that was,

well, it was achievable before.

You know, now everyone has got one of these in their hand

and it's free, you know, each just your time.

That's all it is to do that content

where if you've asked me the same question 15 years ago,

I would have said, well, Ben, we have to get a camera crew down.

We have to film it.

We have to approach ITV and Channel 4

to see if we can get you an advert in between some TV programs.

Your budget is going to be about 200 grand

and that's for your on the road band,

you know, all your chicken wing business.

That's what it's going to cost you.

Where today, if you achieve all of that

and reach your audience, your direct audience,

for absolutely nothing, just your time.

The bit that made me smile when researching for this episode

and just refreshing my mind with everything you're up to at the minute

is just 365 days ago and we had our conversation last.

Was it a year ago?

It was.

Was it?

Right here.

But obviously so much changes

and we had a chat about the differences between YouTube and TV

and how obviously your life's taken you through amazing knowledge,

production, you produce TV shows, not only appear and star in them.

Yeah.

But I've also started seeing you creep on to YouTube far more,

which is something you told me you didn't think you'd be doing.

No, I'm doing it from one automotive.

You'll notice my own sort of YouTube is still dormant and quite very quiet.

You know, it's very much trying to promote this business

and get this business rocking and rolling where it should be.

And I'm doing all the things that I just told you myself, you know,

I'm using it on weaponizing social media and YouTube

and my daughter's skill set because she does all of the digital marketing

for this company.

I'm utilizing that weaponizing it to make sure that I can reach customers

and get sales done.

In fact, just before me and you stepped into the van,

somebody had seen one of my YouTube videos on my camper

and just bought it over the phone.

So it works, you know, that works.

And I didn't have to advertise it.

I didn't have to spend a fortune of money with an online,

as we know, an online seller.

I just did it as a YouTube video and I managed to get it sold.

People talk about the term unfair advantage when doing things for business.

And that is the heck you're allowed to create an unfair advantage.

So I think what I'm getting at is you've built such a dominant personal brand.

How much headroom do you think that gives you compared to

you still got to operate traditional overheads and costs when running businesses

and we'll go into the fact that sometimes that that ends and businesses close.

We're going to talk about that today.

But over the years, a bit like what Calvin does,

because Calvin gets most of his stock from people that follow his channel.

If you do it without the social media side in this day and age, do you think it can work?

No, absolutely not.

No, I think and I can't think of a dealer that I know within my network

that doesn't do social media.

You know, they all do.

And it doesn't matter whether we're talking about a new car dealership or used car dealership.

They all simply doing some form of social media.

Or if it's not, if it's take, for instance, a Porsche dealership

and they could be an individual Porsche dealership, they might not do their own social media,

but the Porsche brand will to support all of their network, including that dealership.

So it's almost like default now.

It's a job, you know, within a company structure and a company like this,

a company in no doubt like yours.

This is what you do and Calvin's company.

It is now a job.

There is a job role specifically for a digital creator within that company.

Excuse me.

Your latest show that you're known for, Born Dealer.

Born Dealer, yes.

I love the title of that.

And I never thought that I could love a title more than Wheeler Dealer

because the Wheeler Dealer is iconic.

You know, it's been around for so long.

It's an iconic title, but Born Dealer feels more natural to the mic

that I know, because I genuinely do feel that you were born to be a dealer.

I don't think I've ever asked you when you were younger,

were you born to be on camera?

No, not at all.

I have before we get there as well, I actually come up with a title,

Born Mechanic for Ancho, Master Mechanic for Ancho.

And so when this came around, Born Dealer just seemed to be perfect.

I've written a show for Elvis, Born Racer.

I've written that already.

So one day that might appear.

But yeah, I like this sort of born thing.

Born Dealer, though, does open itself up to a load of other connotations.

I don't do gear, so you can't come to me and go,

all right, we got in the bag, got in the nosebag.

We don't take that kind of stuff.

Born Dealer, it means car dealer.

I did try to call it Born Motor Dealer,

but Discovery wanted to shorten it to Born Dealer.

And the other question was, was you born to be on the car side?

Definitely not.

I think we've covered your story from the iconic Chandelier story.

It's such a big part of you.

But I don't think I've ever understood the mic before appearing on camera.

Just the same guy you'll see sitting here and anyone who knows me

and I hope there's some watching that would say I'm just the same guy.

I've never changed.

I've never had any desire, no wants to be on camera,

to do any TV work, no desire for it at all.

It just happened in 1997.

I got plucked out of obscurity.

A dude who showed on Channel 4 called Deals and Wheels.

That was a huge success.

I got head undead by Top Gear.

So Channel 4 then wrote another series around me,

effectively called Driven, which was a massive hit

and sort of not Top Gear off the air for that short period of time before it come back.

And then Wheel of Dealers came along and I never asked for any of it.

It just sort of happened.

But I'm a very quick learner and I learned television and the television people.

I learned them very, very quickly and I knew I was good at it.

And for me being a dealer back then, you know, in 1997, I was a lot younger.

For me, it was all about, you know, how much money can I earn?

What can I put on the table to feed my girlfriend at the time, Michelle?

You know, how much money can I get?

And, you know, my car trade money was here at the dealership

and TV money was there, got £200 an episode.

That's what I got for Wheel of Dealers.

And then very quickly, that went like that, you know,

and so I went, oh, forget the cars for a minute.

Let's concentrate on where the money is coming from.

When did that switch around again, though?

Because I understand from doing what I do with this,

that I've been lucky enough to build a digital marketing agency around my podcast.

And I've built these businesses around the core personal brand and thing that I do.

When did that start to switch for you again?

I mean, because that tape might be a motor, for instance.

You grew that to two different locations up north, 100 people.

Yeah, huge business, huge, great big site,

absolutely massive operation.

When did you start growing those businesses again

off the back of a personal brand and starting that kind of stuff?

Well, that was weird because I've never really left the motor trade.

You know, there are people out there that think I'm some kind of fake motor dealer

and I get it every day online, you know, when somebody wants to make a nasty comment,

which I get a lot of, they might say you're a jumped up, you know, wannabe salesman.

I don't know why salesmen have got a bad reputation,

but they say nasty things and they think it's all make believe, you know, it's made up.

But I come from the car trade, you know, my dad was a mechanic.

I'm a mechanic with my dad.

I come from the car trade.

I started buying and selling cars when I was 15 years of age,

not even 16 years of age, I started buying and selling scooters and then cars.

And I've sold them all my life.

And all the time that I was doing deals and wheels and wheeler dealers in the early years

and driven, I never stopped buying and selling cars.

I'd always buy and sell, always kept my hand in.

And it wasn't until, I can't remember the year specifically, but it would be about 2010.

I got approached by a company that already was doing some work for

their up in Chesterfield, an amazing company and some really good people.

And they were having some cars come in back off a fleet business that they had,

a lease company fleet business.

These cars were coming back in and they asked me for a meeting with Michelle.

We went up there, sat down and they said, look, we've got all this stock coming back in.

We've got no avenue to sell it.

You're Mike Brewer. Can you sell it for us?

And I went, Michelle's, you know what my Michelle's like, you've met her.

She was, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're doing this.

So we were like, what's happening?

What's happening? What's happening?

So within a week, I'm standing at a disused garage in Sheffield

that was a Toyota, an ex Toyota dealership.

Within a week, we're buying it.

You know, we're buying this big site in Sheffield and we're filling it with this stock

that I'm getting on SOR from friends of mine at this lease company.

And it was incredible.

You know, we started off there and grew the company to well over a hundred staff.

And we've had probably a thousand staff through the system.

Over a hundred staff grew it to two sites.

I bought BMW in Luton, offer BMW, bought the site off of them,

run that successfully for a few years.

But the problem with my promoters was it was too big for the sites.

The sites just didn't work.

We were moving 200 and 250 cars a month of either site.

And the site could only handle sales of about 18, 90 cars.

So you were forever just moving cars around to your is that the best things

like that that people don't realize the amount of time to juggle stuff around.

Loses over how would take take this, for instance, OK, take small little business,

one automotive you have in one automotive we can hold around 60 cars in stock.

But of those 60 cars in stock, we've got maybe 20 or 30 of them sold.

But there's another 20 or 30 waiting to come in to replace the ones that are sold.

And they've got to come into stock.

So the site, like my promoters, it can hold around 60 to 80 cars at a push.

But where are the others going to go?

You know, they've got to go somewhere and you can't end up,

which we do get in trouble here with it with empty.

I can't sell an empty hole. It doesn't work.

You just need to keep filling the holes with cars and with stock to keep.

And it's a system that we've created.

And it's a it's about the flow of the system.

So you have to have cars out there that are coming in.

Plus your cars that are in and cars that are sold waiting to go out.

But they've all got to be housed somewhere.

And that is the logistics of running a big business like Mike Brewer Motors,

because we had a big site in Luton, but a big site in Sheffield.

And we were moving cars continually between the two sites.

Somebody in London wants to see a car that's in Sheffield.

So we'd get it down to Luton.

Somebody in Sheffield or Yorkshire wants to see a car that we've got advertised

at our site in London, so you'd have to move there.

So we were just moving cars around all the time and it doesn't work.

You know, money wise, that doesn't work.

So we decided to change that and go to a clicking collect business.

We realised that we could deliver a car anywhere within mainland UK,

cheaper than it was to move the cars around.

We could just deliver it to your door.

And if you didn't like it, you can just refuse it as simple as that.

So we moved to that business model and that was a success.

But there are loads of other reasons why the business didn't succeed.

Nothing to do. We had the system flowing.

I think it was right.

It just come down to costs.

That's what it comes down to.

And it's no different than the guy that owns the factory that makes shoe laces.

You know, at the moment in the motor trade, this is what Calvin's face in.

And this is what Joe at the motor's.

This is what he faced as well.

You've got spiraling costs from online online seller.

I don't want to say their name.

I think everyone knows what I'm talking about is where we all advertise their cars.

The costs are just ridiculous, but it is a monopoly.

They own it.

It's the only platform that really works for us as a business and for other dealers.

But they know that and so they just keep ramping up their prices

and attaching these different little tricks to, you know, how we can sell our cars.

But you've got to pay for that, you know, this new little thing.

If you haven't got it and your rivals got it, you're going to lose out.

So those costs went up.

Our insurance went from three and a half grand a year to 13 grand a year.

Energy prices went up.

You know, you're talking about trying to heat this place,

trying to pay for heating and water and everything.

You know, the cost of the cleaning materials went up, the cost of fuels gone up,

the cost of living wage went up, the national insurance contributions went up.

Everything just went up over the last few years.

And as it's increased, increased, increased, you see your profit margins

just start to come down and then start to go into negative.

And with Mike Brewer Motors, I haven't been paid.

You know, we run that business for 15 years.

I never had any money. Not why everyone else got paid.

I made sure all the staff got paid. Everyone got paid handsomely.

But the only people who never got paid was me and Michelle.

In fact, I'll tell you the truth.

The only money I've ever had company in 15 years, I think once,

if I did divided it up, it'd be 1200 quid a year.

How about that? Probably had a 20 grand dividend once.

That was it. Of 15 years.

Nothing else.

You've been telling me just prior to getting in the van that you've been doing

a lot of reflecting recently about what you're going to do with your time.

Reflecting on how long am I going to be mobiles?

That was a waste of time.

What am I going to do?

I was going to ask, do you regret going through that story?

Not at all, because you have to go through these things to learn

and be better at the other end.

And what we've learned from that is obviously

scale doesn't necessarily work.

People, they start off small and they scale up.

With scale comes massive problems and bigger overheads and bigger problems

and bigger buildings and more staff and more problems to deal with staff.

So that's what happens with scale.

So what I've decided to do and that was funded.

That business was a funded business.

People tend to forget with a business that size,

you're borrowing upwards of 40 million

pound to service your 1100 cars you got in stock.

You know, it's a huge amount of money and debt that you're having to pay back

each month just to service the loans where this business is solely funded by me

and my business partner, then Michelle.

So this is completely different.

Turnover vanity, profits, vanity, cash is king.

Correct. Right.

And this makes this business completely different.

And this one we are not scaling.

I've scaled next door.

You can talk about me expanding next door, but we had to.

But that's it. That's where we're going.

If any of if James, my business partner on Michelle says,

is a bigger building down the road, I'm running for the hills.

I'm not doing it. This is where we are.

Is we can make this the most happy, profitable little place

that we could ever wish for. And that's the dream.

In your own words, who are you and what do you do?

I'm a Porsche 911 Carrera 991.2 model.

I was engineered in Germany and I provide drivers with lots of fun

and even remove my roof sometimes.

What's been the hardest challenge over your mileage?

Well, I'm on 7500 kilometres on the clock.

And so far, other than an oil change, everything has been good.

Well, that's where I know that that's untrue.

I've done my research using car vertical.

And I found out that your last known mileage was 15,741 kilometres,

meaning that you've been clocked.

And I can also see that you were involved in quite a serious crash.

And you seem to be doing a great job of hiding it.

You're not who you say you are, are you?

No, no, I'm not. But how did you know?

See, simply by using the registration of the 911 or the VIN,

I can enter that into car vertical and their platform

uncovered an entire history report on my guest.

Now, this showed your damage, including photos of you crashed,

your untrue mileage history.

And I can even see if you've rented yourself out, ever been in trouble with the police

or if you're adopted as an ex demo.

And as I got my report as a bundle with discount code success saving up to 50%,

I've got all the details about the next vehicles coming on too.

I never leave any car that I'm looking into unchecked.

And anyone listening, you can check out all the cars you're thinking of

buying a friend's car, a family's car, anyone's car,

using the car vertical link in the description of this video and as the pinned comment.

And as I said, you can save up to 50% with my code success

on a bundle or 20% off a one off check to discover if your next car has any hidden baggage.

Is that a proper mindset change?

Because you can obviously say that statement and there's a small part of me

that believes that next year will be sat in an even bigger building.

So I might not put it.

I know. But then last year I came here and now it's still twice the size.

This is twice the size now because I needed it.

To repress that natural born.

How hard is it to repress that down?

Do you have to go through big lessons like what you did?

She has got blonde hair.

She's five foot two and angry.

And that's what the suppression is.

It's just trying to keep Michelle.

It's not me. You've met Michelle.

He's trying to keep her at bay.

She always wants more, bigger, better, bolder, which is brilliant.

She's pushed our life to where it's got to.

Michelle is the backbone of everything that happens.

But I've told them all, this is it now.

This is enough.

You know, there is no I'm not taking any money out of this business.

You know, it paid me a dividend last year.

Didn't take it. Left it in the business.

I don't get paid. I don't take a wage.

Michelle doesn't take away.

This is all for free.

Right. I'm doing it like my promoters doing it because I like creating

wealth for other people.

I like to employ good people.

I like staff, good staff and what's not to like?

You know, this is a great place for me to come, hang out,

keep myself attuned as to what's happening in motor trade,

fine tune my communication skills,

because I'm talking to customers all day and have a laugh while I'm doing it.

You know, I've got Mark 1, Golf G at Mark 2.

Sorry, Golf GTI over there and, you know, what's not to like?

You know, I just have a bit of fun while I'm doing it.

Is it almost like medicine?

It's I can't not be around cars.

You know, cars are is kind of weird.

I've said this before and I've said it on camera.

I am a car whisperer.

You know, I do communicate with vehicles and cars

and I have this weird relationship with them personally.

I sort of love them and that you're very good at getting rid of them.

I'm very good at very good at selling them.

But I just love the journey of a car and I love what cars can do

and the dreams that they can create for people.

And there's nothing better.

You know, there are some amazing experiences here where you've sold a car

and, yeah, as a dealer, I've sold a car and I've paid some of his wages.

But you see them and they've like, yes, they've got their dream car

so they can go and explore and have, you know,

their time with the car and their adventures.

And for me, that's worth more than money.

That's worth its weight in gold. I absolutely love it.

Why did you call this business one automotive rather than might brew a best

fans? The address is number one.

Simple as that.

The address of this business was one Heathcote way.

When I bought this building, this was where I kept my private car collection.

Yeah. And I was renting it out.

This is what some of the other work I do that people don't know about.

I was renting the unit out to the likes of Auto Alex several times

to the likes of Cardi the magazine several times.

James Baggett, I was rented out to

an agency in Birmingham to do lots of television commercials in here.

And I was rent out and all the profits were going to charity,

all the proceeds going to charity.

So I needed to create another answer to this address

rather than just be my private garage.

So I just thought, call it number one studio because the address is number one.

So I called it number one studio.

I was rented out, giving the money to charity because, you know,

I just have my private cars in here.

I'd move them out into the car park.

People are coming, film commercials, film award shows,

Auto Alex film, several things in here.

I did that.

And then when I decided to create a business out of the unit,

it went from number one studio to number one automotive.

It was kind of just fell into place like that.

I could call it my bro motors, but I think number one works

because this works at the size scale tactility that it is.

Was you ever in any mindset with my bro motors to attempt

to just scale it down to suit the market?

Or when something gets that big, is it just too much of a beast to scale back?

Yeah, I mean, we did scale back.

You know, we we grew to 65,000 square foot in Sheffield,

which is, you know, just ridiculous when you think about the size of that.

It's and the size of heat in that and just caring for it.

It's is frankly ridiculous to do that.

But we had to, you know, we had so much stock.

We had so many customers and reviews were off the scale

or a winning awards left for on the centre.

So the business scaled up to that size.

And then we decided to scale it back.

But that was with staff.

You know, we started to realise that we didn't need 20 validers.

You know, we could get 10 validers working a little bit harder.

We didn't need tensile stuff

because it was more changing to a click and collect business.

So we started to scale back in terms of personnel.

But we faced these challenges of rising costs.

Every every month goes by, you know, the cost kept rising

and we just couldn't make it work.

I was spending one pound 20 per month to make a pound and not being paid.

And that went on for over a year, you know, millions of pounds lost.

And it's unsustainable.

So we made sure everyone was fine.

Everyone got jobs within the group.

We've got a sister company called Evogo.

People move the cross there.

We offer voluntary redundancy to the company.

Some people took it because they wanted to.

They wanted to take the money and go and work somewhere else

or do something else.

But yeah, everyone left very happy.

So how do you back up the initial statement at the start of the podcast

of yes, go be that car dealer when there's so many stories

like that, I got that wrong because of the way the business model worked.

It was funded that company.

So it's a fun interest on the money as well as a funded company.

You're paying interest on the loan.

But if you're a non funded company and you you're a car dealer

and you're thinking I've got enough money to start off with four cars

on my driveway and I could create a little business and four cars on my driveway.

You will make that work.

And I know plenty of car dealers that do exactly that.

And that's how Calvin started.

That's how Joe Barrows started.

That's how all these people start.

They start off very small.

They scale up to a nice little size.

Joe went off to YouTube because he realized that was better for him.

But Calvin, I couldn't hold a candle to Calvin.

You know, his site is huge.

He's created businesses within his business and around his business.

And Calvin's absolutely doing a fantastic job.

And he uses social media and all the tools and all the weapons

that he's got his disposal to do the best job he possibly can.

S.O.R. versus buying vehicles.

If you could only do one, what would you choose?

I'd like to buy the vehicles always because you take ownership of that car.

S.O.R. works.

That's for those who don't know, sale or return is an S.O.R. vehicle.

But usually that's more money.

You have to, you know, if somebody wants 30 grand for their car on

sale or return, but it's only worth 32 retail, you're only going to get

two grand out of it.

By the time you paid a salesman, you paid a vat on the profit.

You put a warranty on it and you advertise it and detail it.

You'd be lucky to get 800 pound profit out of that two grand.

Where if you own it and you bought it, you would have bought it for about 28.

Sold at 32, four grand profit.

So there's by the time you take all your costs out, it's going to be a couple

of grand, clear profit for you running your business.

And one of those costs are generated by a business that you've implied,

but not mentioned.

And I'm happy for you not to mention that business, but we just don't want to go.

Why don't you want to go down that route?

Just the clarity of the people listening.

You know, I work with them in some other sense of the word.

You know, I work with that company and I've relied on them for the past

40 years of my professional career.

I've relied on that company and they have done a phenomenal job.

Absolutely phenomenal job.

It's just over the last year, you and me and the trade, we tend to think

that that's now not run by, you know, it used to be run by sort of ex-car dealers,

old car dealers and people understood the trade.

But now it's not.

It's just run by, you know, accountants who just want to drill down

as much money as they can after you car trade.

And that business, you think about it, it's brilliant.

It doesn't own a thing.

It owns nothing.

It doesn't buy the cars, doesn't sell the cars, it doesn't take the risk.

It doesn't take none of that.

All it does is a portal for people to go and find their cars on.

And yet they take a huge amount of money out the middle, a massive amount of money.

Which as entrepreneurs, there's half of me that goes there enough.

Like every business owner's kind of goal is to start a business

that's really profitable, that does well and delivers the shareholders their money.

That is, you know, the ultimate goal of starting a business.

There's then things within business that's just like where usually

founders morals pull through, which is then the bit that kind of

semi-balances that public persona of massive profit versus you've done OK.

But fair enough, you've done X, Y and Z.

You talk about the work that you do with the charities that you're doing.

You're about to announce an extraordinary figure

that you've raised from the charity, etc.

So how does, though, how do they think it's going to be long term sustainable

when loads of people are leaving and moving away?

There's all this noise.

Do you think because it's still baffling there's not some sense of listening?

Yes, it does.

I think it baffles the trade that there isn't a sense of them again.

Well, we made a mistake.

They haven't actually admitted they'd make a mistake yet as well,

which is kind of bizarre.

They've sort of stopped one of the things that we're doing,

which has caused all this anguish in the first place.

This new way to sell cars.

But yeah, they haven't actually said sorry to the people that they have sent to the wall.

You know, I've got several dealers that have reached out.

People think that I'm the portal for car dealers to come to with their grievances.

And yes, I'd love to be there.

They're selling board and they do come to me with their problems.

And I my inbox is full of it.

And I feel really sorry for these guys because these are people that are just like me.

They've worked hard to build a business and now they can see their business

and it's been eroded by the huge profits being made by this company

and the profits are not being passed on to them.

Plus, this company put themselves between the customer and the dealer.

Mistakenly put themselves in between the two and that caused nothing but anguish

because it meant that if a customer reserved the car online with that platform,

you had to take the car off the sale till the customer got in contact with you.

And they had so many days getting contact with you.

But you didn't even have a deposit.

You didn't have the money.

They did. So it's kind of, you know, that was bizarre.

That whole model was bizarre.

And it really did affect a lot of businesses.

A huge amount of it, including mine, it affected my business.

No end. We've had to reduce what we do on that platform

because we just simply can't afford it.

And we're now having to rely more on social media to get our message out

where about the stock we got, that we can, I mean, in an ideal world,

I think every car dealer would like to move away from that platform

and just, you know, be their own boss, you know, do their own social media

and sell cars that way.

Good news is I hear there's competition on its way.

So there's competition coming from other big main companies out there

that they've seen the problems that have been happening in the UK car trade.

And they've said, no, we can do it better and they're coming in.

So I'm very excited by that.

And, you know, if any of those companies that you know, you are Google,

if any of those companies are interested, I'd have to be the face of your company.

I'd love to drive it forward for you.

Which is amazing, because that shows how big the scale of the problem

must must be on the other half.

Yeah, it's huge.

Even for the, you know, it is I'll tell you how big it is for

and I'm a tiny little operation that self-funded.

There was about three months ago.

So it would have been we had a good December, it was November.

We I for the first time since I've opened the doors here,

when the bill come through from that company to pay, you know,

I had to pay that month, we were staring at how we're going to pay the wages.

We could not think how we're going to put unless it's Bank of Mike again.

You know, it's Bank of Mike to cover it.

And that happens, you know, that happens all the time.

Whenever there's a problem, it's like, oh, don't worry, it's got some money.

And I have, you know, I've got I've got my my nest egg.

You know, I'm hoping to enjoy with my wife.

But no, you know, you have to tap into Bank of Mike again to get things through.

So it get the margins of that time.

You know, this is a tough business to be in.

But if you do it right, you'll be fine.

And we are currently doing it right.

So that's why I'm I'm all for go for it and give it a chance.

If you can do it right, you can do it right.

And on that, we spoke about the hardest parts of being a dealer,

going through moments like you went through, might be a motor's after all those years,

dealing with platforms that want to take all your margin.

The fact that cars are getting harder to come by.

I think they are the question I asked Calvin was what his biggest challenge is

or he thinks the industry's biggest challenges, apart from the obvious,

is that it's just actually buying stock.

There is no no stock out there.

No, the stocks controlled by the aggravators.

So you've got these online aggravators, we buy any car and motorway.

And these online aggravators that basically, you know, the stocks go in there.

It's not coming to us.

It then gets picked up, goes through an auction and we get a chance to buy it from the auction.

But then there's been somebody else involved with a profit before you get it.

And that makes it difficult.

So where is like the peak in dolphins of doing what you do?

Where are you absolutely most happy from doing what you do?

Once I hold out my hand and shake it and the deal's been done

and they are as happy as I am with the deal and that happens here.

Twenty times a week, it's just wonderful to see it is lovely.

Absolutely lovely.

And it adds to people's experience that the Mike Brewer from the telly

is actually the one that's holding out his hand a lot of the time.

As well. I'm here.

So talking about the telly, because there is so much to go into, obviously,

born dealer, you've been doing, you've been doing a lot with Quest TV as well.

Yeah, born dealer.

Yes, is where born dealer is.

Talk to me about 2026, what's coming up?

Where do we?

Because I tell you where we should start.

We should start by saying about the story of the viral clip of that.

The WSB2, you went to Brazil to do that.

Yeah, well, it's like, you know, I'm a great believer in trying to will your

dreams into action.

You know, I've always have.

If you if you believe it and you will it enough, you can make it happen.

And, you know, we're really dealers.

I'm a producer on that show and I'm a big voice, you know,

within the production, within the team, I'm a big voice.

And, you know, I've got a brilliant wingman, Elvis, who you've interviewed.

It's just the best wingman, no disrespect to Ed or to Ant,

but Elvis is like a brilliant wingman.

They will work, but Elvis is great.

So every time I have a thought or a decision, he never fights back on it.

He explores it.

Elvis is very analytical.

Explores the idea.

He wants to know why.

And when I explain to him about the ESP2 and I see one 10 years ago

when I was in Brazil and then I showed him pictures of it and the history

behind it, Elvis is all on board.

And it's very, very difficult for anybody else to sit in front of me and Elvis,

a boss to sit in front of me and Elvis and tell us we're not doing it

because we are. It's as simple as that. We're going to do it.

You know, you're going to buy tickets.

We're going to fly with our crew to Brazil and I'm going to buy a car that you can

only buy in Brazil. I'm going to buy it and we're going to put it on TV.

And we're going to show the world how amazing this car is because the world

didn't get to see it because stupidly Volkswagen only made it in South America.

So we want to show that to the world.

And of course, you know, when you got me and Elvis sat in front of our bosses

at the network, they they have to go for it.

Otherwise, the answer is the option, the the alternative to that is

or we're not doing it.

That's the alternative, isn't it? We're not doing it.

I've really liked the way you summarised how Elvis is to work with the quirks

of the person because it hasn't been difficult.

Obviously, it's been difficult.

But to deal with the new personality coming in of

Anne and then Elvis and the changes over the year from Ed at the beginning.

Yeah. Is that bit?

How long does it take you to get up to speed with your new

within a within a within a finger click within a finger click?

Me and me and Ed just like that.

We fell in love with each other because we love the same things.

We love cars, you know, and we love the story of a car.

The the rescue of a car, how we can bring that car back to life.

Me and me and Ed have that.

We just instantly fell in love with each other over the love of cars.

And then during my period of Ed, I got to meet Ant and me and Ant.

Whenever me and Ed were on stage talking about cars,

I'd be off stage talking with him about cars.

So me and Ant had this shared love of cars.

It was a natural thing.

So it was very natural when Ed decided to go.

It's very easy for Ant to come and join because we had this chemistry

and this love of cars together anyway.

And you could see that on screen when

now Ant was still working with me when Elvis come along.

I did a show called Dream Car with Elvis.

And we were still me and I was still in America making Wheeler dealers.

We were flying, absolutely flying.

And we've grown the audience from the Ed period to the Am period.

It doubled inside.

It went from 120 million to 240 million, you know, over around the world.

It was just incredible.

And then Ant, Elvis come along, which was in Dream Car.

And me and Elvis immediately, if I showed you the chemistry test

we did together, which was in a 1962 Bedford C.A. van

that had love and peace painted on the side of it.

And they put cameras on the van, put me and Elvis in it.

And we just met each other and they said, drive off the road up the road.

And when you come back, we'll see if it works.

Is that the right way of doing a chemistry test?

The right way for me and Elvis.

We got in that van, we as soon as we pulled out of the yard, it was my yard.

As soon as we pulled out, I'd farted.

He was laughing his head off.

He farted 10 minutes later.

We were giggling.

We were talking about how stupid this van was, how it could be better.

And within a minute, we're in love with each other and we're in love with each other.

Over one thing, the love of cars and the love of vehicles.

And that was again, when Anne had his baby

and decided to stay in America, it was a very easy transition

then to bring Elvis in the show because we already had a great relationship.

And it also shows that at many points, you could have given up after Ed

and not replaced and not carried on and not gone again and gone again.

And there were people who had it done.

Look at everything that would have been missed.

And there were lots of people out there that wanted me to give up.

And still people out there tell me, you know,

you backstabbing bastard, you should have given up back then.

But it's what why?

Why should I give up?

Because somebody left his job.

I don't want to give up.

Does it ever obviously does because we talk about the negative comments

all the time still and there's so many people of us close to you.

We just don't understand what we see sometimes with comments

that are written about that circumstance.

When you're just under a car and building it with someone and creating a show,

do you ever get genuinely mind blown at what that show ends up

meaning to the people watching it all the time?

Yeah. And we never lose sight.

Either Ed and or Elvis and me and the crew

all the way down to L.E.U. goes and gets my cup of tea every 10 minutes.

Nobody loses sight of the customer.

And the customer in our case isn't somebody I'm selling the van to.

The customer is the person sitting at home with a remote in their hand.

But we always think of that person every single show we do.

We are thinking about how important is this story to every single person

that's watching it and we need to make it the best it can possibly be.

So everyone enjoys it.

And that is like the raising dectra of wheeler dealers.

It's the charter if I could write it on a war to be on a war.

Is there much left to do in wheeler dealer world?

We've only just scratched the surface, haven't we?

When you think about it.

So we did 21 years, you know, in the UK and America.

And then we took wheeler dealers on the road with World Tour.

World Tour One was a phenomenal success.

We took wheeler dealers to the people that love it and wanted it.

And we did it in France, Germany, in Australia.

You know, we had all these adventures going around the world.

It was absolutely incredible to put wheeler dealers in front of that audience

and to be with that audience.

You know, it's remembering, say Australia, for instance,

when we turned up in Australia and we're just two guys making a car show

for Discovery, you know, in the UK, we turned up in Australia.

We were filming at a garage and they announced that we were there.

Five thousand people turned up.

Five thousand people turned up one night.

We shut the whole of the town down, police, everything.

We caused nothing but chaos, five because they wanted to come and see us.

And it was just nuts.

You know, that's absolutely nuts.

And that happened in Italy and Spain, wherever we've been.

You know, we've just had thousands of people want to turn up a meters.

And that is the point, putting wheeler dealers on the road.

So we did series two, Mexico, Brazil.

We went to Malta, Turkey, Turkey's amazing.

We had an incredible time doing it again, you know, wherever we went.

Thousands of people. It was absolutely brilliant.

And now we're just about to embark on wheeler dealers at Walter three,

which I gather, you know, once we've done the third one,

we might have to think about the moon.

I don't know. There is a moon buggy up there and it could be worth rescuing.

I was going to ask you about that.

You know, if I said the name Tim, I forgot it.

The first word is it is either Tom Scott of Tim Scott, who is a big YouTuber.

Pass. Now, he did this video.

He did so well.

He's getting millions of views of video.

And I know Tim Schmi 150 absolutely loves his videos.

And he did almost the Nico Rosberg in F1.

He just decided that he was done

and he was going to do like a final send off video.

And he did this final send off video where I think it was mad.

There was a plane. There was all this stuff.

And it was like the goodbye.

Do you ever think of that or is in your head is there no end?

Do not let that come at creep into your thought process.

There is definitely an end.

You know, I've been so lucky.

I've had such an amazing career.

Do you hate getting questions like that?

No, not at all.

Because it's not the first time it's been asked.

I've done everything a boy could do other than go to space.

I've, you know, I've been to war.

I've been I've driven every car you could possibly fantasize over.

I've been to every corner of the planet.

I've worked on cars around the world with people.

I've sold cars on every continent.

I've done everything in my world that I could possibly dream of doing.

You know, lived in America for six years.

It's been it's been an incredible journey.

It really is. But there has to be a full stop.

You know, unlike, say, Clarkson, who's with his farm,

he's just continually going for me.

There has to be a full stop.

I can't, you know, before we jumped on this podcast, I said to you,

there is this when you get to my time of life,

there is your mortality is in front of you.

It really annoys Michelle when I talk about this,

but I can see it in front of me and I want to enjoy the years

that I've got left with my wife.

I just simply want to enjoy the years I've got left.

And, you know, I've sacrificed weddings, birthdays, anniversaries,

parties, I've sacrificed everything for the past 27 years, 28 years now

on TV for the sake of the craft of TV.

And it's time that I didn't do that anymore.

You know, there is I'm going to do another world tour.

And there's a couple of other series planned as well.

I'm going to do that.

But, you know, sometime in the future, it has to come to an end.

Like, I'm not going to be good to end on a high.

Wouldn't it? Isn't it good to end on a high rather than, you know,

just keep going until you until you just become a has been.

You know, I don't want to be a has been.

I just want to be somebody that did something really cool, enjoyed it,

made some money along the way and I'm enjoying the fruits of my label with my wife.

To all my loyal listeners listening on Spotify, Apple and other streaming platforms,

I urge you to do me a quick favour that you might not know that you could do.

You can actually follow if you're listening on Spotify, the Road to Success podcast

and also rate it with how you feel these conversations have been,

how they may have helped you or if you're just enjoying the one that you're listening to today.

It really will help us if we're able to grow our streaming platforms

beyond hundreds of thousands of monthly listeners.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the podcast.

And I really hope to bring you some more inspirational guests soon.

Is it fair to say, if we take it right back to the beginning,

way further in than where the full stop is,

that the thing that you are almost most uncomfortable with,

which would have been right at the beginning of TV,

has given you the most enjoyment and experiences in your life.

And the thing that you are the most comfortable with,

born dealer has maybe given you the most strats.

With Grubhub, there's no fees on restaurant orders over $50.

You eat the food, Grubhub will eat the fees.

Wait, oh wait, Grubhub is going to eat the fees?

Wait, like the receipts?

It's a metaphor for how Grubhub is doing away with fees.

No delivery fees, no service fees, no rainy day fees.

But what if it rains?

Can I still order delivery? Please!

You can still get any type of food delivered without getting off the couch.

In that case, what about the no pants fee?

Oh, well, I've never heard of that one, but I guess we'll eat that too.

No fees on restaurant orders over $50, only on Grubhub.

Grubhub will eat the fees!

Details at Grubhub.com

Uh, not really.

I don't think that's, you know, born dealer...

Not as a sugar, like as being a car dealer,

because there's so much stress sometimes,

the overheads, the businesses, everything.

But the thing that maybe you weren't expecting the TV side,

is that the thing that's like, wow, I don't know.

Ben, honestly, if you are,

I'll invite you along to a Wheeler dealer production meeting

when things are going wrong.

And that's where you're going to see stress, you know.

That's where you'll see stress.

Tell me about that.

This is easy.

But this is easy.

This is just the stress of you're buying something, it's a commodity.

You've got 30 days before the price changes on that commodity by the trade,

changes the price.

You've got 30 days to try and sell it at make a profit.

That's the stress of the motor trade.

The stress of TV production is you are on a train, on a track that has stations.

Those stations are your transmission dates.

You're going out on TV, whether you like it or not.

That car is on television on that date.

That car is on television a week later.

That car is on television a week after that.

And you're trying to work on four cars all at once,

and you know the station's coming up,

and you still haven't got the car into paint.

Right, that is stress.

And the other car you can't get a part for.

And the other car won't start.

It refuses, so it's not started for a week.

That is stress.

That's where you're just pulling your air out again.

How can we make this work?

And when we did that on World Tour,

that was happening all over the world.

So I've got cars that are in Spain.

I've got a car in Spain that's got the engine hanging out of it,

and nobody knows what's wrong with it.

I've got a car in Malta that is fundamentally a bucket of bolts

that we're trying to make a great car out of.

You've got a car in Turkey that you're relying on a bunch of guys

that don't speak a word of English

to make sure that they do the right job on the car,

and you're in between all of that,

trying to present a show in Italy.

And you're in between all of these conversations,

and the stress of that is unbelievable.

But somehow, I don't know how, we kind of make it work.

We meet the station.

We always get to the station, and we make it work.

But to get there is nuts.

And I couldn't get there without the team.

It's impossible without team Elvis being number one in the team.

He's my number one, and it'd be impossible to do it without him.

He's so laid back, so calm, so calm in.

If I'm stressed, he will bring me down to just almost a zen level

within a minute of talking to me.

But the team that we've got around us,

all the producers, all the staff, camera men, the sound recorders,

everyone that works for me on Wheel of Dealers,

they all know how to behave,

every single one of them knows how to behave,

and how to get through the next thing,

and how to deal with it.

And it's become sort of robotic.

It's become automatic.

So when you talk like that, and you tell those stories,

and you say about going all over the world,

doing all these different cars with all these different people,

and all these different things,

and it's giving you all this fulfillment,

where is there to go?

Is that the question you find yourself asking,

or do you somehow still find created?

There is a bloody buggy on the moon, isn't there,

that's got to be the most expensive car ever made,

and probably the most expensive car there will ever will be.

So if somebody wants to send me at the moon,

I can't get the bloody thing.

Where is there to go?

You know, the world is a massive place, Ben.

The world is incredible,

and going out there in the world,

and seeing car cultures in different places,

and bringing that to my UK audience,

or bringing car culture in Turkey to an audience in America

that probably never even thought about going to Turkey,

is incredible.

Yeah, absolutely incredible thing to do.

So for me to go to Japan,

you know, there's a huge exploration in Japan.

We're going to do four episodes there.

We're going to do an episode in Hungary.

I'm going to do a great car in Hungary,

a car that was built in Hungary, the Audi TT.

So I'm going to be doing one of those in Hungary.

We're going to go to Canada, hopefully on this trip.

There's a car up there called the Bricklin,

which is really good.

I'm determined to do a show in Detroit.

I have got a brilliant story for a car in Detroit.

We're just working through the visa issues

with Erica at the moment.

And yeah, there's plenty of other places, obviously the UK.

You know, we want to do a couple of episodes in the UK.

So it's going to be an exciting, this World Tour Series 3.

Could be the, it will be the best,

because we get battery each time we do it.

So it will be the best series ever.

It'll be really exciting.

We'll tell some great stories, some histrionics of cars,

a lovely bit of archive about why this car's important.

And then you're going to see Elvis on the tools

and me doing the deals.

It's, you know, good old wheel of deal format.

Where has got the best car culture in the world?

That's a really good question.

And I get asked that all the time.

And, you know, whatever I say,

I'm going to say the wrong thing, aren't I?

You know, I'm opening myself up here to...

Well, I suppose it's just your favorite, isn't it?

It hates us, yeah, but I'm not allowed to have an opinion

or my favorite because the hate is just...

I mean, America has got the best car culture in the world,

in my opinion.

They absolutely embrace the classic car culture better

than anybody else.

When I lived in California, and not any California,

I've got, I travel all over America.

Wherever you go, on a Saturday, a garage door is open

and there'll be a classic car in a garage being worked on

with a father and son or a father and daughter, or both, right?

It seems to be a right, a passage for an American

to work on the car with their dad in the garage.

And we don't do that in the UK.

We don't do it in France.

We don't do it in Germany.

We don't do it in Italy.

We don't.

It's as simple as that.

And people, oh, we're more dead in the garage in these cars.

Yes, you probably did.

And you are unique, but you don't see it everywhere.

And in America, you get to see that everywhere.

Plus, car culture is very rich in America

because it's such a massive country.

They've bought cars in from Japan.

You know, the Japanese car culture in America is huge.

So they've got every Z car you could possibly think of

and they look amazing.

Obviously, their Americana is amazing.

And then their Brits, their love of the British classics.

You know, you'll see more British classics

at an American car show than you would do at a British car show.

Simple as that.

Especially in the Northeast.

If you go up to the Northeast and go to any car show up there,

Hartford or places like that,

I do a show called the Big E, which is in Springfield,

not where the Simpsons live, but another Springfield.

There's a car show there that I put on every year with Wayne Carini.

And this car show is nuts.

There's more British cars there than you'll ever see.

How to get him on.

Yeah, you get Wayne on.

He's great.

You'll see more British cars there than you ever will see

at a British car show.

They absolutely love their cars over there.

And what about the biggest surprise nation

that you've done something in those years?

You thought this might not be...

This is not what I was expecting, you know?

Mortar was won last year.

So when we went to Mortar, again,

abundance of British classics in Mortar,

all in really good condition because, you know, weather.

So you've got people buzzing around the island,

lots of defenders, but lots of people buzzing around the island in

cortinas, particularly cortinas.

Lots of Ford product down there, Subaru's,

you know, that kind of cars they got out there as well,

like early WRXs and Justies or whatever they are,

Allegro's, Max's, you know,

they've got lots of British cars in Mortar

that seem to, you know, not rot like they do in the UK.

So that was a surprise.

The other surprise, I think for anyone really is Italy.

You know, whenever you go to Italy,

the car culture there is so very patriotic.

I will say it's not many British cars in Italy,

but they're very patriotic about their own cars.

So you'll see lots of Fiat's and you'll see lots of Ferraris

and you'll see lots of Lancia's and you'll see lots of Alphas,

an Italian car show, and that's wonderful to see.

Poland as well.

You know, Poland, I loved it out there.

They go crazy for their little larders and their 1-2-6's.

You know, I went to a 1-2-6 show.

I see every flavor of 1-2-6, you know,

from a limousine to a convertible to slams to a rat rod,

you know, every kind of flavor of 1-2-6 you could possibly make.

They absolutely love them out there.

So yeah, I mean, car culture, it's funny.

Car culture is still gigantic all around the world.

This is why we have my TV company Discovery Channel

still commissioning car shows.

This is why we have, you know, Matt Armstrong

with these 6 million subscribers and Tamarish

with these millions of subscribers and Altaralex and you.

This is why we have it.

We have it because car culture is still very rich

and it's universal, you know.

If you look at your comments and you look at Matt's comments

and Tamarish's comments, they're not from, you know,

they're not from their local, they're not from Leicester.

Matt's comments, they're from people in Australia

or people in Argentina or people in, you know, Norway.

They're from people all over the world that are enjoying content.

So yeah, the car culture is very universal.

Car culture also has to be shaped by things that people see

and the only other motoring show that has even scratched

the level of travel that you guys have done on Wheeler Dealers

is Top Gear Slash Grand Tour.

Yeah.

The three guys and what you guys have done,

you are, I think your side is the longest running motoring show

on television.

Longest continuous motoring show on television.

Most watched as well motoring show on television,

which is quite amazing, isn't it really?

And you've continued to make that work,

even with the changes that we've spoke about in mechanics

over the years.

Yeah.

The half people think it's right or wrong out there.

And that is just like another show we can talk about

that's just going through a change.

We've watched how Top Gear tried to transition with new shows

and we're now at the Grand Tour transition.

So again, this is just personal opinion and personal preference

rather than fact.

But has Wheeler Dealers survived because it's always had

the one continuous, which is you?

And do you think it's possible for a show like Wheeler Dealers

and at the Grand Tour to continue with a whole new?

I absolutely think Wheeler Dealers can continue without me

and it should do and it does.

In other areas of the world, we have a French version

of Wheeler Dealers, which is really successful.

I helped put that on the map in the early years

and that's very successful.

I think in its 12th season, our 13th season,

we have Wheeler Dealers in Sweden,

the Wheeler Dealers in Italy.

And if there is to be another Wheeler Dealers in the UK,

auto Alex would absolutely,

little Alex would step into that role, my role,

fantastically, quite easily.

Yeah, so, yeah, Wheeler Dealers should continue.

It's not about me, the show isn't about me.

It's about, you know, it's about the car.

The car is the star of the show.

I'm not the star of the show or all this, it's about the car.

Why didn't shows like Top Gear really work, do you think,

after the three guys left the mood over to the Grand Tour?

Because it wasn't about the car, it was about the personalities.

So it is different things.

You know, Wheeler Dealers is very much the car is the star.

We always focus on the car.

People, you know, might think that I'm the celebrity

and Elvis is the star.

But we don't think like that.

You know, you know me, you see me interacting with people.

I'm just Mike.

You know, I don't think that I'm a star.

And not as Elvis, you know, just two normal guys.

Where, you know, the Top Gear team, they were stars.

You know, it is undoubtable.

You know, they get papped going into, you know, a restaurant.

They get followed around.

You know, they are, there's no paps outside one automotive.

Everyone knows where I am.

There's no paps there.

But they got papped everywhere.

So they become stars.

And that's why it did work.

I thought it worked with Paddy Freddie and with Chris.

I thought it did work.

Phenomenal driver.

I actually really enjoyed a lot.

I really, I loved it.

You know, Chris's stories are amazing.

You know, he's stories and the films that he made, Chris made.

I thought were phenomenal.

And the bravery from all three of them,

some of the stunts they pulled.

I thought they were ridiculous.

You know, some of the things they did.

Well, obviously they've become very helpful.

I thought that learned.

Tiff as well.

Like during Tiff's podcast, I showed him a picture

of him in a Morgan 3-wheeler on sideways with his head nearly

touching the tarmac.

And I said, but that's what happened on Top Gear.

Like they do take some pretty mad risks.

I mean, you always tried to not necessarily put yourself

in harm's way in the vehicles as much.

You can't really do stunts in a MGB GT.

It just doesn't work.

You know, a mic in a tried Spitfire doesn't mean it's going

to be like a Spitfire and it's going to fly.

So no wheel of dealers is very much a low key, low down,

you know, sort of just an easy going show that is all about

the car and the mechanics and the deal.

Top Gear was all about the craziness of cars and exploring

what you have, how far can you go with a car, you know,

across jungles and rivers and, you know, into space.

They tried to launch them, you know, off of catapults and

things like that.

So that was about the craziness of car culture.

And yeah, you know, I really enjoyed, I really do.

I love car content.

And I really enjoyed the Paddy, Freddy and Chris

a period of Top Gear.

And I think it's going to come back again.

You know, at some point, it'll probably bounce back again

with another three people.

I mean, they're just redoing the Grand Tour.

I don't really know anything about the host of the new

Grand Tour.

Nobody phoned me, but I don't really know anything about

the host of that.

And I'm yet to, you know, see it and watch it go out

and see if I enjoy it.

If it's about cars, all the good for me.

You know, I just love people talking about cars

and keeping their content out there.

But I can see on a personal level and anyone

could understand why that some of the comments

that you've had to deal with over your career,

only at specific points, which is going to happen

over a career, have been seriously, seriously difficult.

What do you think is one thing that's got you through

that and not caved in, you know, caved in mentally

strength wise?

Family, you know, Michelle really is the one that

gets me through most things.

And there have been some dark days.

You know, I've had to read some stuff online,

especially when my mum was alive, you know,

my mum's alive and she's, when she was dying,

she was really poorly, you know, there was some awful

things said about me online for no reason whatsoever.

And she reads all that, you know, my mum reads that.

And, you know, there I am in America or in the UK,

raising money for charity and do my best for charity.

And those charities at the same time are reading

that I'm a Nazi or, you know, I'm a murderer or

whatever it is, you know, people want to say online

about me and that's not helpful.

You know, it doesn't help that charity.

It doesn't help anyone.

You know, all of that nonsense that somebody was

saying, it's just foul abusive nonsense.

So I've got a really thick skin.

I don't care about him.

You know, I block, delete everything that comes through.

If I showed you my delete list, we'd be here for a day,

just scrolling through it.

But yeah, just, you know, it's just noise in it.

But once you've got 200 million, you know,

viewers around the world, 0.0001% don't like you, you know,

and that's fine.

I've never been abused by somebody doing better than me.

How about that?

So nobody better than me has ever abused me.

It's only people doing worse than me.

Is that why you've frequented so many car shows over the years?

Because I do notice and I speak to a lot of people,

a lot of people that have been on television,

a lot of people done shows.

I mean, all kinds of characters, characters that keep themselves

a little bit to themselves and they're laying characters

that are way more open.

And I don't think I would have had someone in the van

that's probably done more selfies and pictures than you

in their time.

I see you at Silverstone.

I see you at Chiro's events.

I see you at the Chiro's event that he's doing with you.

Might be allowed to see all these shows.

Constantly, hey, Mike, you all right?

Do you get there to also maybe subconsciously

make sure that you're keeping in touch with the good of humanity

too that watch you so it drowns out some of those comments

behind your phone at home?

Yes, because when people come up to you face to face,

they're not going to walk up to you and say,

I hope you die of cancer, are they?

Which they will do online, but they won't do it to your face.

They come up and go, Mike, love your content.

So yes, you get to meet nice people.

But I don't go to car shows deliberately to be loved.

I don't do that.

I went to Business Scramble, the first one of the year.

I'll have everyone love Scramble.

I love Scramble.

I just walk around like a petrolhead.

You know, I walk around with my daughter.

She loves it as well.

And we walk around kicking tires,

looking at the cars, talking to people.

And it keeps me not chewing with my audience.

It keeps my brain active about cars

and what people are interested in and car culture.

Plus, every single year, there's a developmental change

in terms of restoration.

You know, restoration seems to get better and better each year.

And when you go to something like Business Scramble,

you'll see a Pheon Porsche 911,

and you'll be standing there going,

ow, ow, did you get it to that level?

And why can't I do that on wheeled dealers?

You know, why can't I, how did you paint that?

Where did you get that metal work done?

So it gives me a chance to just be in touch with cars

and talk to people.

And yeah, I mean, it's lovely.

I'll walk around and people walking up to me

all the time for selfies and want to shake my hand

and pat me on the back.

It's wonderful. You know, I absolutely love that.

What is Mike Brewer's favourite automotive show

that he's not part of?

Oh, I was going to say Wheel of Deal Alive,

which is made this year.

Bista, again, with Chiro and you, no doubt.

And all the team would be there again.

But my favourite show of the year, there's a few.

I do quite a few.

But it's the big one, isn't it?

It's the NEC.

It's the classic motor show at the NEC in November.

That is a kind of, you know, great respect to Andrea and Lee

and the people that put that show on and arranged it all.

Kind of feel like it's my show as well.

I feel like really a big part of that.

Yeah, I've been doing it for, I think, 17, 18 years,

my 18th year at the NEC.

And when it was one hall and, you know,

one man and his dog when I started.

And now it's this huge, great, big, massive event

that everyone looks forward to throughout the year.

And I own a small piece of that in the corner of a hall.

You know, I own a piece of that.

And I get to, you know, bounce around on stage

and entertain people and talk about car culture

and car knowledge.

And, you know, I absolutely love it.

That's a big one for me.

But as I say, I do lots.

What about on a screen?

What's a show that you're not involved with

and physically attend that you enjoy car show wise?

That's one of your favourites as Mike Brewer is the wheeler dealer?

Yeah, love watching car SOS, Fuzz and Tim,

two friends of mine, two great friends of mine,

wheeler dealer crew when they're not working on wheeler dealers,

working on car SOS.

So I get to see the fruits of my labour, if you like, as well.

Plus, I wrote car SOS originally.

So it was a show that I put up to National Geographic

called Wheeler Dealer SOS with me and Ed many, many years ago.

And I gave it to National Geographic and become car SOS.

So I really enjoy watching that.

I also enjoy Richard Amman's workshop.

You know, I think it's great.

I know Richard, he's a mate of mine personally.

And it's nice to see him, you know, on camera doing his stuff

and failing.

And I know, again, the crew that make Richard Hammond's workshop,

the same team that make Ball Dealer.

It's a very small business.

So yeah, I get to, you know, I get to see the fruits of their labour as well.

So yeah, I do watch a lot of car content.

I love watching all the YouTube content as well.

You know, I love watching Matt's stuff.

I love watching Tafarish.

He's a really, really big mate of mine, Tafarish.

I absolutely love him to bits.

Love watching Alex, you know, and Alex and what he's creating

with these nonsense that he does online with Taylor.

Love watching you.

I love watching Calvin.

Love watching the logbook.

Yeah, I watch that all the time.

Peaks, what's it called?

High Peaks.

Love watching that.

Yeah, my, you know, if you look at my YouTube front page,

it's just populated with all of these,

sort of, you know, people that I can find each night

when I get home.

I absolutely love all that content.

So my final question.

Oh, no, is it over?

All it is.

Any regrets?

Do I have any regrets?

No, not really.

No, I've had an amazing career, amazing life.

No, I don't have any regrets.

It's been fantastic all along.

It's been absolutely brilliant.

My only regret is that I probably didn't start earlier.

You know, if I was to have a regret,

it was that come along, you know, when I was in my 30s.

Really?

Yes, Wheeler dealers, all deals and wheels.

And I wish it come along when I was in my 20s.

So I basically, I wish I was 10 years younger than I am now.

And in the position I'm in now,

so I can enjoy it a little bit more.

But I'm in my 60s.

It's funny that because so many, my dad, my hero,

and bless him, he's not around anymore,

but he was 42 when he started his business.

And I do think of that.

I use that as an anchor a lot when I just don't feel,

you know, so many things online that make us young people

feel like we're not doing enough by a certain point in time.

And I think it is really important to just pause

when you hear things like that.

I think, bleu monnette, the Mike Brewer.

But I didn't start until he was in his 30s.

I didn't start doing this until I was in my 30s.

I've been a car dealer since I was 15 years of age.

Ultimately, you know, I went to work in the print

in the early years.

But when I was in the print, I was buying and selling cars,

buying and selling scooters.

Couldn't help myself.

And then once I come out of print into the car trailer 18,

I was my very first week in the motor trade.

I sold 11 cars.

Started on a Monday.

By Thursday, I've sold 11 cars.

Actually sold 11 cars on the Thursday.

On one day, I sold 11 cars.

The deal was 100 quid a week,

100 quid a car, sorry, 200 pound a week.

And this is back in the 80s, a lot of money.

So on the Friday, my governor was peeling off 1,300 pounds

to a 18 year old lad that never seen.

I've never even seen 300 pounds in my life.

And there I was one week's wages.

I was getting 1300 quid.

And I was, I, you know, blew me over.

So that was me.

I'm like, I'm going to do this for the rest of my life.

And I'm going to be bloody brilliant at it.

And I just put my head down and got on with it.

And I've never stopped doing it since.

Well, it's one of the greatest pleasures of my year

when I get to spend an hour chatting to you.

Someone that I grew up watching on television

to be able to sit so freely.

And here you talk so honestly about the brutal truths,

realities and things that hit you for this hour

when we chat.

Thank you so much, Mike.

Thank you from the audience.

Thank you from me.

Thank you.

Thank you for thinking.

Yeah.

Cheers, buddy.

All right, your hand.

Mike Brewer On Closing His Dealership, Wheeler Dealers Cast & UK Car Market

About this episode

social media

Top Gear

Toyota

click and collect

Porsche 911

car vertical

VIN

untrue mileage history

pre-purchase inspection

Volkswagen Golf Gti

sale or return

dealer margin

buying stock

Volkswagen SP2

Bedford C.A. van

Nico Rosberg

Audi Tt

Bricklin SV-1

classic car culture

Nissan Z car

Ford Cortina

Subaru WRX

Ferrari

Lancia

Alfa Romeo

Fiat 126

convertible

Wheeler Dealers

The Grand Tour

Morgan 3Wheeler

NEC

Classic Motor Show

Car SOS

Request an Explanation

Want to learn more?

Help improve this episode

More from Road To Success with Benedict Fowler