Car Dealer Podcast Nov 21, 2025

Mitsubishi to return to the UK, Ford Focus finishes production, and Van Mossell snaps up UK dealers – with Craig Cheetham, episode 232

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Car

Saab 93

The Saab 9-3 is a car made by the company Saab. It's known for being stylish and having powerful engines that use turbo technology.

Car

Audi Q3

The Audi Q3 is a small luxury SUV that is comfortable and stylish. It's a good option for those looking for a higher-end vehicle with a nice interior and good features.

Car

Nissan Micra

The Nissan Micra is a small car that's easy to drive and park, making it a good option for city living. It's known for being affordable and reliable.

Car

Toyota Carina

The Toyota Carina is a mid-sized car that many people used for everyday driving. It was known for being dependable and good for families.

Company

Millennium Motor Company

Millennium Motor Company is a car dealership that sells cars, especially those that are hard to find or special in some way.

Company

Stone Cold Classics

Stone Cold Classics is a car dealership that specializes in selling classic cars that are really nice and well-maintained.

Company

KGF

KGF is a car dealership that sells really nice cars, especially ones that collectors might want.

Car

Jaguar Xtype

The Jaguar X-Type is a luxury car that was made by the British brand Jaguar. It is known for being stylish and having good performance, especially with its all-wheel drive feature.

Car

Peugeot 406

The Peugeot 406 is a car made by the French company Peugeot. The Executive version is a fancier model with more features and comfort.

Car

Volvo 240

The Volvo 240 is an older model of car known for being very reliable and safe. The speaker mentions it has a lot of miles on it, which shows it has been used a lot but still runs well.

Car

Jaguar Mark I

The Jaguar Mark I is an old, fancy car that was made a long time ago. It's known for looking beautiful and being a nice car to drive, especially for collectors.

Car

Jaguar XJ6

The Jaguar XJ6 is a fancy car known for being luxurious and stylish. The speaker mentions a newer model that is lighter because it has an aluminum body.

Car

Land Rover Range Rover

The Land Rover Range Rover is a fancy, big car that can drive on tough roads and also feels nice inside. People like it because it looks good and can handle rough terrain while being comfortable.

Part

4.6 V8

The 4.6 V8 is a powerful engine with eight cylinders arranged in a V shape. It's known for providing good performance in vehicles like the Range Rover, making them strong and capable.

Car

The Range Rover P38 is a luxury SUV made by Land Rover, known for its off-road capabilities and comfort. It's part of the second generation of Range Rovers, produced in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Concept

flip

Flipping a car means buying it for cheap and then selling it for more money. People do this to make a profit by fixing up or cleaning the car before selling it.

Car

Vauxhall Corsa

The Vauxhall Corsa B is a small car that was made in the 1990s. It's popular among young drivers because it's cheap to buy and run.

Car

Ford Fiesta Mark IV

The Ford Fiesta Mark IV is a small car that was popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Many young people like it because it's fun to drive and easy to park.

Car

Volkswagen Golf

The Volkswagen Golf is a compact car, and the V6 4Motion version has a powerful V6 engine and all-wheel drive, which helps with traction and handling.

Car

Alfa Romeo 916 Spider

The Alfa Romeo 916 Spider is a convertible car that is fun to drive and has a beautiful design. It was made in 1998 and is loved by car fans.

Car

Alfa Romeo Spider

The Alfa Romeo Spider is a cool, two-seater car that you can drive with the top down. It's known for looking great and being fun to drive, especially for people who love classic cars.

Car

Jaguar XJ8

The Jaguar XJ8 is a fancy car that offers a smooth ride and a stylish look. It's known for being comfortable and has a strong engine.

Car

Mercedes-Benz E320

The Mercedes-Benz E320 is a luxury car that offers a comfortable ride and many high-tech features. The W211 is the specific version of this model.

Car

Volvo XC70

The 2001 Volvo XC70 is a practical car that can handle different types of weather and road conditions. It's known for being safe and spacious.

Term

1.8 Turbo

'1.8 Turbo' means the car has a 1.8-liter engine that uses a turbocharger. A turbocharger helps the engine produce more power without making it bigger.

Term

tax

Tax for cars is a fee you have to pay every year to the government. The amount can change based on how old the car is and how much pollution it makes.

Company

British Car Auctions

British Car Auctions is a company in the UK where people can buy and sell used cars through auctions. It's a popular place for finding good deals on vehicles.

Company

Car and Classics

Car and Classics is a website where people can buy and sell classic cars. It's a good place to find older cars that are special or unique.

Car

Jaguar Xj

The Jaguar XJ 3.2 is a stylish car made by Jaguar, a brand known for luxury vehicles. This model was produced around 1999 and 2000 and is recognized for its comfortable ride and upscale features.

Part

cam chain tensioners

Cam chain tensioners are parts that keep the timing chain tight in an engine. If they don't work properly, the engine might not run well or could get damaged.

Part

timing chain tensioners

Timing chain tensioners are parts that keep the timing chain tight in an engine. If they fail, it can cause the engine to run poorly or even break.

Car

BMW Z3

The BMW Z3 is a small sports car that was made in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Because it's an older car, it might have some problems that need fixing.

Car

Honda Accord

The Honda Accord is a well-known car that many people like because it’s reliable and fun to drive. The years mentioned, 1998 to 2007, refer to a specific version of this car that looks good and performs well.

Term

VTEC

VTEC is a system used in some Honda engines that helps the engine perform better. It changes how the engine works at different speeds, making it more efficient and powerful when needed.

Term

rust

Rust is what happens when metal gets wet and starts to break down. It can make cars weaker and can be a sign of bigger problems if not fixed.

Brand

Chevrolet

Chevrolet is a popular car brand from the United States. They make many types of vehicles, like cars and trucks, and are known for models like the Camaro and Silverado.

Car

Kia Picantos

The Kia Picanto is a small car that's easy to drive around town and park. It's cheap to buy and run, making it a good choice for people who want a simple and reliable vehicle.

Car

Toyota Yaris

The Toyota Yaris iA is a small car that’s great for driving in the city. It’s known for being reliable and using less gas, which makes it a smart choice for everyday use.

Car

Mitsubishi Outlander

Car

Nissan Xtrail

The Nissan X-Trail is a medium-sized car that can fit a lot of people and their stuff. It's good for family trips and can drive well in different weather, like rain or snow.

Car

Ford Transit

The Ford Transit Custom is a big van that many businesses use to carry goods or tools. It's popular because it has a lot of space and is dependable for work.

LIVE

Welcome back to the Cardila podcast where we pick our favorite stories of the week and ask an industry guest to choose which were the best.

I'm John Ray and joining me once again this week is James Baggott.

Hello, John. Nice to see you. How are you?

You want to talk about delay?

Well, no, no, it just took me a little bit of time to process what you said. Sorry, fella.

And it was only hello. So yeah, this podcast is going to go well, isn't it?

Yeah.

How are you doing anyway? I note that you're in my house again, so it has been at least five minutes since I saw you.

Yes, that's true. Thanks for the coffee, by the way.

Yeah, well, I'm here because we've been going through used car awards things, haven't we, which is of course on Monday.

So possibly by the time you're listening to this, it's already happened.

I feel wholly unprepared for it. I don't know about you.

James, that's not the image we like to put out here in the world.

We're a very organized company. We've been doing this for 13 years now. It's all good. It'll go very smoothly.

It'll be fine.

What have you been doing? Because you've been doing some car sales as well.

I have been doing some car sales, actually. Yeah, I had quite a successful afternoon yesterday.

I popped into the dealership to film a video of the lovely Saab that you sold us, John.

Beautiful Saab 93 with just 7,000 miles on the clock, which is wonderful.

We're putting that up for sale on the car and classic auction platform because these things too good to sell in a normal advert.

Because I have no idea how to price it.

So yeah, I was up there doing a video for that and took two phone calls and sold two cars.

So a very, very successful afternoon yesterday.

It has been a little bit quiet.

I'm sure it's the time of year, James.

I'm sure it's the time of year, John.

Yeah, I've seen that mentioned a few times this week on various different platforms.

It does get quiet.

So last year we got quiet the second week of November all the way into Christmas and then January went mad.

We are preparing at the moment for the January rush.

I'm going to be going out and buying some more cars in December.

And we just want to have everything prepped and ready to go.

So we're going to sort of hold our nerve and hope it works.

But yeah, part from that has been a little bit quiet.

Interestingly, last week we obviously had our podcast with Nathan Cove from AutoTrader all about deal builder.

That sort of saga has rumbled on this week.

I'm sure it will come up in the news stories.

And I can tell you, we had our first reservation on deal builder this week.

Shall I go into that now or shall I save it for the stories?

Go on, save it for the stories.

I'll save it for the stories, yes.

Can I mention one thing, James?

The cars that you sold this week, did you remember to make sure people paid you for them before you delivered them?

Yeah, I forgot to tell you this story.

That is proof I am a terrible car dealer, isn't it?

I sent the car out last week and a guy had said,

I've sent the money across, so we sent the delivery driver the next day.

I completely forgot to check the bank.

When the car turned up at his house, he rang me back and just said,

can I just make sure that you got the money?

No idea why I did that.

He was obviously very, very honest.

And I checked the bank account and it hadn't arrived.

The bank had withheld his payment.

So thankfully he went back on and sent it again.

But yeah, I mean, just proves that I'm not very good at this job.

I mean, it was an expensive car, James.

It was only an Audi Q3, so what's that?

It was £10,000.

Yeah, you could have afforded to lose that.

It's all fine.

Anyway, shall I introduce our guests?

Yeah, go on, please.

So I'm hoping our guest doesn't mind this intro that I've written for him.

Our guest this week is journalist, podcaster and 1990s used car hoarder, Craig Cheatham.

Craig, lovely to have you.

Good morning.

Nice to see you, Craig.

I mean, that was an entirely accurate description.

I'm going to amend it slightly, actually.

I would say 1990s and early 2000s.

To my mind, that's the purple patch of the car industry that always will be.

I'm with you, actually.

I'm with you on that.

You and I have known each other 20 years now, I think.

It's more than that, James.

They had 2002, wasn't it?

2002, yeah.

Okay, that's scary.

I feel very old now.

So Craig and I met when we both worked on Auto Express.

Since then, your career has gone into the stratosphere.

Mine has plateaued, something.

You've done many things over those years of you, which we're going to cover.

But part of that I want to talk about is your collection of cars.

Because you've built a collection of cars into a used car business,

pretty much, haven't you, over the years?

After a fashion, yeah.

I mean, I've been collecting cars.

And I say collecting, not collecting cars as in Ferraris and Maserati's,

but collecting cars as in Nissan Micros and Toyota Carinas and things like that.

All the stuff that we remember from our childhood.

If you're of a certain age anyway.

And I know we're both in our 40s now.

And I know neither of us looks it, but we're both in our 40s.

And those are the cars we remember when we were kids.

And to my mind, they're far more important.

They're far more a part of the social landscape than the Exotica and the dream cars that people have.

So I started buying stuff that I remembered thinking,

well, it's things that are slowly disappearing from our roads.

It's like, well, get one of those and just have one for a bit and see how it goes.

And suddenly found myself with far too many cars than I knew what to do with or knew how to handle.

So I've sort of in the background set up a business, the Millennium Motor Company,

where we've been selling cars.

And there are companies that specialize in this kind of thing.

There's a couple of guys I will mention who are KGF and Stone Cold Classics,

who are both really, really good and they sell grade A superb cars.

And I'm not trying to tread on their toes at all because I think there's a gap in the market for cars that are really nice,

but aren't quite good enough for them.

So those guys specialize in really low mileage or absolutely immaculate or superbly restored cars.

The kind of stuff that I'm looking for is survivors.

So I don't mind buying a car with a six-figure mileage if it's a nice car that's been properly looked after.

I tend not to touch anything that's falling apart at the seams,

but finding a good car from that era, there's a rapidly growing market for it.

Great, great. Let's talk about some of the stuff that you have got in your collection,

because I'll be part of the reason you're on the podcast because we want to talk about your podcast,

the Clangors podcast, and we'll come on to that.

But I've really enjoyed that, listening to that and hearing your stories of some of the stuff that you do have in stock.

But for those people listening, explain the quality of the cars that you have.

Well, probably the easiest way to do that is from my mind's eye to go through a row of cars

that I know where they're parked at the moment and tell you what they are.

So we'll start with a 2002 Jaguar X-Type three-litre manual,

which is a car a lot of people have forgotten, but the three-litre manual one,

four-wheel drive, 0-60 in less than six seconds, and it looks like something your grandad drives.

I love that car.

Classic red, cream leather, absolutely. It's a real bit of me.

Part next to that at the moment is a 1998 Peugeot 406 Executive, metallic grey, black fluted leather,

68,000 miles from you.

I bought that because I left a note under the windscreen marker in Tesco's car park.

And about six months later, the 89-year-old owner phoned me up and said,

I've gone to something smaller. Do you want to buy my Peugeot?

It's always worth doing this when you're chasing cars.

I've got a 1988 Volvo 240 with 300,000 miles on the clock and a handwritten service history back to day one.

And then I've got a banana yellow or sunflower yellow.

I think it's the correct phrase.

Renault Magin Coupe, Mark I, Phase I Coupe.

And then next to that is a 2003 Jaguar XJ6, three-litre, the first of the alloy body ones.

That's quite a new car for me, as is the Range Rover L322 that's parked next to it.

And then outside my house at the moment, I've got a Range Rover P38 with a 4.6 V8 in it.

So, you know, that's just a snapshot.

That's about a third of the cars that I've got on the road at the moment.

But I appreciate you've only got an hour, so...

I could see John Ray getting very excited about some of those cars.

But you've basically built a business off the back of an addiction to buying cars, haven't you?

Essentially, yeah. Yeah, very much so.

So, I'm addicted to buying cars. I don't actually like selling cars.

It's a necessary evil, you know.

Selling cars, I'm sure a lot of your listeners will relate to this.

Selling cars involves dealing with the general public.

And that itself is not always a pleasurable experience.

I mean, the good thing about dealing in a specialist market like this

is that a lot of the people who buy cars from you are enthusiasts.

And that's great because, you know, if they're buying a 30-year-old car,

they know they're buying a 30-year-old car, they have a level of expectation.

And that's not to say that, you know, I'm pedaling a load of broken old rubbish

because we all know that if you do that, you can get into a lot of trouble.

But if you buy a 30-year-old car as the minor goes wrong with it,

if you're an enthusiast, you're not going to jump up and down, stamp your feet,

and, you know, try and reject it, which, you know, might happen

if you're trying to sell a 10-year-old car.

So, you know, in that respect, you do get a better type of buyer, I believe.

The challenge these days is actually finding the right stuff.

It used to be that the cars of the era that I loved were plentiful.

And now they're getting harder and harder to find, especially in good condition.

The flip side of that is you're actually, you know, historically,

I was buying cars for hundreds of pounds and selling them for maybe, you know,

between one and two grand.

Now the outlay is probably one to two grand.

But if you find the right car, you can, you know, you can flip three or four thousand on it.

Can I ask, Craig? Sorry, I'm interrupting.

No, no, you go for it.

I was just going to say the kind of buyers that are buying these,

obviously you've got your people who are, they want a Peugeot 406 from 2003 or whatever,

because they miss it and they miss the era of car.

Are you also getting like younger buyers as well?

Massive buyers.

Really?

Yeah.

I've got theory about this, actually.

And I've spoken to a couple of young people who've bought cars from me.

And they particularly, obviously because of the age profile,

they're generally looking at cars that are inexpensive to ensure.

So if you can get your hands on something like a really nice K11 micro at the moment

or a Vauxhall Corsa B or a, you know, Mark IV Fiesta or something like that.

Some youngster will come along and buy it.

They've got a car that's relatively cheap to run.

It's relatively cheap to ensure.

And more than one young person has said to me that the appeal of these cars for them

is that they live in a digital world where they're constantly connected.

And to get into that car and it be completely analog and have to turn their phone off

and not be connected to some screen in the middle of the car

is actually their only chance to just switch off from the world and relax.

And the great thing about car from that era is you can drive it like a modern car,

you know, okay, the brakes maybe not be quite so good.

But by the mid 90s, car manufacturers had handling nailed down.

So, you know, you jump in a 90s car.

It's not a massive compromise to driving a car that's 30 years newer than it.

And reliability as well generally.

True.

And reliability as well generally speaking.

Certainly not necessarily reliability so much as that they don't break down less.

It's just when they do break down, they're a dance site easier to fix.

Craig, where do you sell these cars?

You know what?

I tend to, because it's not my main source of income.

I tend to do one at a time.

And there are a couple.

I mean, we do have business premises and we do advertise occasionally,

but we tend not to do a huge amount of that because a lot of it's word of mouth.

But I also go on Facebook, but not Facebook marketplace

because that's obviously home to all sorts of horrors,

but there's specialist groups.

So for example, if I've got, if I was selling the 406

and if anybody would like a really nice 406, do you get in touch?

But if I was selling it, I would go on the 406 owners groups

because people who already have those cars clearly like them

and might be looking for a better one.

Or they might know other people in the club who aren't necessarily on social media

who would like one.

So that's always a good place to advertise it.

The Festival of the Unexceptional, I'm sure you've heard of that event.

That has its own Facebook page.

I think I've probably sold six or seven cars just by mentioning on there that they're for sale

and doing a reasonably well written advert with some decent photos,

which is the key to gaining attraction.

And yeah, probably with each of those cars,

I've had four or five messages from people who've got up and looking for one of those.

Really?

I suppose that's where they are going to look, isn't it?

Have you done any auction stuff as well?

I've done a few.

Yeah, I've done a few through car and classic auctions.

I've done a couple through piston heads auctions where especially,

so last year I sold through piston heads,

I sold a Volkswagen Golf V6 Formotion, 2001.

And I sold a 1998 Alfa Romeo 916 Spider,

both reasonably successfully.

On car and classic, I sold the Jaguar X type Indianapolis Special Edition.

I've done a couple of XJ8s.

It's known the right car for the market.

I did a Mercedes E320 W211 on there as well.

That went really well and decent profit in 2001 Volvo XC70.

So it's knowing the right platform for the right car

and the right time of year is also essential.

Again, because it's not my main source of income,

I tend not to bother at this time of year,

because if you go out this time of year, you're standing outside.

I do all my own prep.

You're standing outside prepping your car in the freezing cold.

It never looks great when it's finished.

It's filthy five minutes after you've done it.

So I tend to wait.

I mean, at the moment, I've got four or five convertibles that I've bought.

And I've bought them at the end of the summer to sell them next spring.

They're just sitting in storage.

Maybe I should wait for my Saab.

I mean, that's the... I don't know.

Craig, what year is your Saab?

Sorry, what is it?

What year is the Saab?

It's a 57 plate Saab 93 1.8 Turbo with 70,000 miles.

So very nice.

Nice mileage.

Yes, wrong year, though, isn't it?

A tax, definitely.

£750 a year tax, painful.

But then a car like that with that kind of mileage,

you're probably only going to tax it for three or four months anyway, aren't you?

You're not going to use it all through the winter

and stick 30,000 miles a year on the clock.

No, that's going up for sale on an auction platform.

Craig, give me an idea of some of the good deals you've done there.

Give me an idea of some of the successful flips you've made.

Well, I mentioned the X-Type Indianapolis before.

That came from British car auctions at Enfield,

and I think I paid £400 for it.

That sold for £4,300 on car and classics.

That wasn't a bad result.

Another one that I got from BCA was Jaguar XJ 3.2.

It was a 1999 or 2000 model.

Gunmetal Grey had the nice Daimler-style turbine allies on it.

Mushroom-coloured leather interior.

It was absolutely filthy, and it had a scrape on one back door,

and the lacquer was flaking off the back bumper,

and I got it for £500.

And I've got a friend, Bob, who does bits of paint for me and what have you.

He painted the bumper, the big scratch on the back door.

Most of it came out with a machine polisher.

And when I dug into the history of that car,

it turned out that it had two owners from new.

The second owner had had it since it was about two years old.

And there was no paperwork or history with it,

but I did find a receipt tucked in the back of the passenger seat.

And this is a tip for anyone who buys a car with no or limited history.

I found the receipt.

I had the guy's address on it.

I thought, well, there's nothing no harm in sending a letter,

an old-school letter in the post with a signature

and a self-addressed envelope and all the rest of it.

And about five days later, I got a phone call from this chap.

He was a headmaster of a private school in Hertfordshire.

He'd owned the Jag.

He'd got rid of it because he'd just got a new, brand new Jag.

Well, he still could before Jag was stopped building cars.

And he said, yeah, I did actually take it so we buy any car.

And I've actually got the service history here in my house.

I'll send it to you.

So a few days later, this massive envelope turns up.

It's got all the bills going back to now.

It had everything done that you'd look for in an XJ8.

So it had the cam chain tensioners done, the timing chain tensioners.

It had had the front inner wheel arch as welded up because they all go there.

And everything you wanted to see was with it.

It was a genuine 80,000 mile car.

I cleaned it up.

It looks sensational.

And I think it went for about six grand.

Wow.

So, you know, but the effort there was in tracking down the original,

that forensic analysis of the car that you buy.

Yes.

And tracking down the bits of history that might be missing.

There's probably a feature in that somewhere, I think.

I think, you know, when you track down the history of a car,

if you don't have it directly in front of you.

I'm sure you're the man who can write it.

That obviously sounds like a bit of a win that one.

I mean, you must have had some horrors along the way.

I mean, have you had any disaster stories?

Yeah.

Everyone has disaster stories in this business, don't they?

And what's the worst ones I had?

I had a Z3 that I sold to someone who just didn't realize

they bought a 28 year old BMW.

I sold that on eBay and I listed every single fault on the car quite clearly.

You know, this is what's wrong with it.

This is what you'll need to do with it.

He arranged to have the car delivered to his home address.

The car turned up at his home address.

And the next thing I know, I get a stroppy email listing all the things that are wrong with it,

which are all the things that I put in the advert.

So that was stressful.

He tried to get his money back and then he's like, OK, you know,

you're not having your money back, mate.

You bought it.

You sold in good faith, blah, blah, blah.

So then he tries to find new things wrong with it.

So I said, well, take it for an independent report then in that case,

because I'm pretty sure that when it left my house,

it didn't have those faults.

He then comes back to me and says, oh, you're wasting my time.

Oh, yeah, OK.

You can see it that way if you like.

How about we just agree that you give me 500 pounds back?

And then I can use that 500 pound to fix these faults.

But no, absolutely not.

So that was that.

And then the nightmare cars.

So the best one I had bought a Honda Accord.

I do like a Honda Accord.

I know that sounds like a very ordinary car,

but they're great to drive.

The one I'm thinking of is the 98 to sort of 2007 to 2003.

The pre-cog advert one.

Yeah, the pre-cog advert one.

Really, really good looking car.

The BTC shape.

BTC shape.

Yeah.

With the 2.3 VTEC engine in it,

it actually is a really, really good car to drive, really good fun.

And I got a silver one.

And again, I bought it.

I do a lot of my stuff.

I'll buy it unseen.

Life's like a box of chocolates.

You get what you get.

And you might do well on it.

You might not.

We're all going to lose on some.

This Honda turns out to look really nice.

And I got it all cleaned up and ready to sell

and took it to my local garage for an MOT.

And my local garage knows me very well,

because obviously I have far too many cars.

And they're very, very, very friendly towards me.

And if anything needs doing to a car,

they'll do me a good price and they'll do me a good job.

I got a phone call.

And it's like, you might want to come down.

And when the garage gives you a ring,

it says you might want to come down.

You know, it's not going to be a particularly good bit of news.

And when I got there, they had the Accord on the ramp.

And it's got these plastic oversills on it.

And they shot the torch up behind the plastic oversills.

It's like, well, all we can see is daylight behind here.

So we thought we'd get you down to say, you know,

it's going to fail the MOT anyway.

Do you want us to take these sill covers off

and see how bad it is?

So I said, yeah, yeah, no problem.

We'll do it while I'm here and I can have a look with you.

And they took one side off and it came off in like 30 seconds

because three of the screws that were supposed to hold it on,

there was no metal holding onto it.

And the car had completely gone underneath,

but on top it was absolutely immaculate.

It was gutting.

I don't think it was a low mileage car.

It was really tidy.

And I thought, oh, you know, maybe I can get a pair of souls on it.

No, there's nothing to attach a new pair of souls to.

Worth the effort.

So yeah, it was a real loss.

It's such a shame, but actually I didn't,

didn't lose on it too badly because that 2.3 VTEC engine

is quite a desirable thing.

So I think I sold the engine for 400 quid,

which more or less got me out of it.

But it sounds like you absolutely love tinkering with these cars

and selling them, but very, very different to what you did

after you left Auto Express, isn't it?

I mean, you work, you actually work for a number of manufacturers,

didn't you?

Well, I worked for General Motors, but throughout 12 years

in charge of, well, I started off working as a press officer

for Vauxhall, and then I was in charge of Vauxhall commercial vehicles,

GM UK fleet, which is obviously quite a big business.

Then I became head of PR for Chevrolet, Chevrolet UK,

then part of the senior management team for Chevrolet Europe.

And pretty much finished my career there

as director of external communications for GM Holden.

So almost every brand I've worked for has been closed down now.

I don't know about my abilities as a PR man, but...

There's probably a few more of those waited in the wings in the UK

that you can go and join now, Craig, and shut down if you wanted to.

Yeah, I long time an automotive PR and really enjoyed it,

and I ended up leaving when GM International basically separated

its various entities.

I had the choice of either leaving or going to work for Vauxhall.

And the voluntary redundancy package compared to the joys

of working for Vauxhall, you know, it wasn't a difficult decision to make.

So yeah, I then went to work for a news agency for a few years,

absolutely despised it.

And I think it was yourself that actually gave me a lifeline out of that in 2018

when I stepped up on my own.

Craig, when you look back at those years working at Vauxhall

and what that business has now become, do you kind of...

Are you a little bit disappointed in how Vauxhall has changed?

I mean, because when you were there, it was an absolute giant, wasn't it?

It was a powerhouse in the British currency. It got too big.

I'll tell you what disappointed me most, and I'm not entirely sure

as this story's ever been fully told.

But back in 2010, Vauxhall-Opel was for sale.

GM had realised that it needed to, you know,

basically after the global financial crisis of 2008,

needed to shed some timber, and Vauxhall-Opel was a big part of it.

And there was a deal brokered with a company called Magna Group,

which was headed at the time by Martin Leitch, who was former head of Ford of Europe.

And they were going to buy it as a separate entity.

And GM's business plan around this is essentially what led to me being a redundant five years later.

Not that that's a complaint at all because it isn't.

But they created a plan of their own which would be to get rid of Vauxhall-Opel,

take the Chevrolet brand that they had that was selling essentially a load of recycled Korean cars

that were previously Deus, and create bespoke vehicles on those platforms

that were going to be GM cars.

And then when they'd sold Vauxhall-Opel,

they were going to effectively take over the Vauxhall dealer network with Chevrolet,

put the Chevrolet cars in there, and relaunch,

so that in the UK it would be Ford versus Chevy, just like it is in the States.

At the 11th hour, they made the decision to retain Vauxhall-Opel.

The deal was pretty much signed and sealed.

We had a senior manager's conference called about 5am in the morning that aligned with the timing in Detroit

where they said, no, this is what we've decided to do.

We've got to keep the business and that's that.

Of course, by that point, they took so much money into re-engineering

and redeveloping the Chevy cars that we had that they could never get back

because it was sold as a budget brand beneath Vauxhall.

A lot of the cars were sold through dual-branded dealerships.

Which dealer was realistically going to take half a dozen Chevrolet Aveos

at a supposedly lower list price when they could go to Vauxhall

and get a pack deal on 95 courses and actually get them at the same net price?

The business model just disappeared.

That's what killed that brand.

But it could have been so, so different.

Vauxhall could have been hived off a long time ago.

GM could still be here in Europe.

It's amazing how those cogs come together and make it work.

But now I think with Stellantis, you've almost got what British Leyland was in the 1970s, haven't we?

I mean, it seems...

You've mentioned there that Vauxhall got a little bit too big.

I mean, it feels to me that Stellantis has done exactly the same thing.

Funny one, isn't it?

I mean, there's brands there that compete against each other.

I mean, Peugeot and Citroen always have, and they've always coexisted quite happily.

But Peugeot, Citroen, Fiat, Vauxhall, all in the same place.

And then you've got Chrysler, Alfa Romeo, Lancio, Maserati.

DS.

DS, yeah.

I'm sure there's others we've forgotten about.

Opel, obviously.

But they can't realistically...

Can they realistically survive together?

I don't know, because I guess as we move into this brave new world of electrification,

economies of scale help with development costs, don't they?

Can I ask, from your time at GM and, of course, at GM Europe,

what I seem to see is that American car companies don't really understand Europe.

Ford of Europe has always been...

It's probably the biggest one, isn't it?

But it's struggling a bit now.

Really, that's propped up by commercial vehicle sales.

I think you could always argue that GM didn't really understand Europe

when you look at Vauxhall and Chevrolet.

Is that how you see it, or am I being a bit unkind?

I think they always had unusual ambitions for Europe, certainly.

So while I was there, they wasted so much money,

continually trying and failing to launch Cadillac and Hummer and brands like that

without actually looking at the market.

To be fair, though, Vauxhall was generally left alone.

It had survived on its own for so long with European people who knew the European market

that it was generally left to do its own thing.

That's probably why it managed to achieve the sales volumes it did and do so well at the time.

Would they have been able to successfully launch and integrate Chevrolet?

I don't know.

If the cars had been right for the market, then maybe we did at the time.

We had the Volt, which was one of the electric vehicles in their infancy, should we say.

It's quite an interesting thing, really.

But the rest of the stuff we had was fairly middle of the road.

We were competing in every market sector where the volume was at the time.

So C segment hatchbacks, which obviously don't really sell these days.

That was the core market there.

We had an SUV, we had an MPV, we had a super mini.

Not one of those cars was class leading.

I don't think I put that in the press release, but not one of those cars.

We'd have struggled to do well.

I suppose with the might of Vauxhall's fleet department behind it, they might have grown that brand.

Do American manufacturers understand Europe?

I don't know.

Great. Let's talk about the podcast, the Clangus podcast.

I'm a big fan of it.

It's something you've started up with former colleagues of ours, Tom Barnard and Mike Askew.

You talk about the sort of cars that you love, don't you?

I'm a big fan of it, but tell those people listening about it and how they can find it.

Okay, so it's the Clangus pod, and Clangus is a phrase that we've termed.

It's nothing to do with space mice.

A Clangus is a car that's caught in that awkward gap between being a classic and a banger.

The time where I buy them.

And it's where there's, I guess, a little bit of appreciation starting to come through for a car that for ages has been largely ignored.

And we're talking about things like the 406, you know, that we talked about earlier, or the Phase 1 Megane, or there's a Mark I Ford Focus that I saw recently as another example.

They're all cars that people have gotten affection for because so many people have them, so many people remember them.

They were actually very, very good at what they were at the time, but most of them were.

And the whole point of the Clangus web podcast is that we, we talk about those cars, both in the context of their era, and how they receive them and also how they're perceived now and, you know, whether it's a good idea to buy one.

And our memories of driving them at the time and the press events.

And James will relate to some of this as well, but back in that period, it seemed like there was a limitless amount of money in the car industry was not the case now.

And that meant that some of the events and some of the PR stands that were pulled by manufacturers were incredible.

The budgets were huge. We got to do some amazing stuff. It was a really, really good time to be working as an automotive journalist, far less of the slog than it is these days.

And I think, you know, that golden era resonates with so many people, not just in our industry, but beyond it as well, where people just have got very, very fond memories of cars that they really, really liked.

So, I mean, this this week, I think we're with 17th in the UK automotive podcast charts, which isn't bad for something that's only recorded seven episodes so far.

No, nice. Congratulations. I was listening to a latest episode this morning and very much enjoyed the stories about the MGF, about how you and you and the guys on the podcast and broke broken the embargo for the MGF and then followed it up by breaking embargo for another rover.

A week later, much to the wrath of the PR team at the time. I did enjoy that one.

You get to see what though in this industry, you've got to be very, very careful because without naming names.

What one of us, well, two of us ended up with working with one of those people who was a victim of the embargo break several years later.

I think Tom would probably agree with me if we said it appeared it hadn't been forgotten.

Funny enough, knowing the person involved, I can well believe that.

But yeah, the things were very well remembered.

But very enjoyable podcast. I wish you the best of luck with it and your other car sales endeavors.

If people want to find it is the Clangors pod on Spotify, Apple podcast, etc.

And you can also find us on Instagram and Facebook as well, where you'll be able to view.

If you've got the Facebook page in particular, you'll be able to view some of the, I would say remarkable vehicles that I've acquired over the past few weeks.

But it depends on your definition thereof.

Well, thank you very much for joining us. I know you're going to stick around and share the stories and play judge and jury for those.

But John, we should probably crack on with our podcast.

This is a paid partnership in association with Dealerway.

John, guess what?

Oh, God, you 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 two and a half thousand 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.

So James and I are going to run through our favourite stories of the week and at the end Craig gets to decide which one of us chose the best ones and who's the winner.

James, apparently you won last week. So off you go.

Thank you, John. Lots of stuff in the news this week.

But I'm going to start, I think, just picking up on last week's podcast and talk a little bit about the AutoTrader deal builder fallout.

What you've called it, James, yes.

Have I called it fallout? Yes, I have. I've called it that in the headline. So it's exactly what I'm going to call it.

So this is AutoTrader's new way of selling cars for all dealers.

It's a way that consumers can go on and reserve them for £99 and then hopefully go on to do a deal.

It has meant that the way that dealers get their leads has changed dramatically.

Last week we had Nathan Coe, the CEO of AutoTrader on the podcast and I'm sure people have watched that and listened to it and heard what he had to say.

There was a few things that he mentioned that I'm not sure whether landed quite well.

We followed the story up.

It was one of the ones was the fact that they're going to be launching these advisory panels for AutoTrader made up of independent and franchise dealers, which I do think is a very good thing.

I think it's probably needed if they're going to come up with these big changes to the way that the industry does the job that they do.

You do want to make sure that you consult the very customers who are going to be using it.

So I do think that is a positive.

John, I had my first reservation on DealBuilder this week.

I must say that my leads have been pretty much non-existent from AutoTrader.

Normally, on a normal given week, we'd get six or seven emails from AutoTrader.

This week we had none.

But we did have one reservation.

So this was a reservation on one of my cars, a Toyota Yaris customer had put down the £99 reservation fee.

That money never actually leaves their account.

I don't know whether that was quite...

Yeah, as I understand it, it's like when you go to Aster and you fill up a fuel and you put in checks that you've got £9 available and pre-auths it.

So nobody touches the money and it checks you good for it.

Yeah, like a hotel basically, isn't it?

So she did that.

She dropped me a message. This was like half past nine at night.

So we were obviously closed at the time.

So it's nice positive to get those sorts of emails.

I jumped on it and sent her a message back and said, can I just check why you've reserved the car?

Is it because you want to buy it or is it because you just want to test drive it?

And she came back pretty quickly and said, I'm sorry, I can't get to you until Saturday.

So I want to reserve it to test drive it.

Well, in my mind, that's not really what a reservation is for.

If you just want to come and see a car, you just want to book an appointment.

A reservation really should be because you want to make it yours.

So I think this has caused a little bit of confusion.

It certainly did with that customer.

Then awkwardly, two days later, I had a phone call.

I'd say two days later, I think it was yesterday.

I had a phone call while I was in the dealership from a customer who'd also seen that advert on another platform

and said, I want to buy that car.

I want to buy your Toyota Yaris.

How much of a deposit do you need and can I have it delivered next week?

Well, it's a bit of the burden hand to in the bush situation.

You obviously want to take the deal.

So I said to him, that's fine.

We haven't had a deposit on it.

We've had a reservation.

We've had a deposit because I can't hold out for that customer to send up on Saturday just to see it.

And then maybe not buy it.

Maybe not buy it.

Whereas this guy definitely want to buy it.

So I'd like to think I did the right thing.

I'd like to think that's what most dealers would do.

But then I had to go back to the customer who'd reserved it and have an awkward conversation and say, I'm sorry, it's sold.

So she's thinking, well, hang on, I've reserved it, et cetera, et cetera.

So I think just talking to other dealers who are having the same sorts of changes to their processes that I'm having to do

and talking to Joe at Clever Car Collection about how we do this, it is very, very different.

And it does cause, because we're effectively the ones that are having to go back to that customer and say, I'm sorry, your reservation needs to be cancelled.

So I do think there needs to be some tweaks.

I don't know, John, what do you think, as a car buyer, what would you think if you'd reserved a car with me?

If I was reserving a car with you, because this is what we discussed, didn't we?

If I reserved it on a website, I would take it that I have reserved that car and no one else is going to buy it.

So what you want to do, James, is you would want to phone me and say in your business, that's not actually reserved.

You've reserved it on AutoTrade.

You haven't reserved it within our business.

Can I take a second reservation from you?

And if I'd had that phone call, I would have been a bit like, that's a bit weird.

If I reserve something in Argos, I don't then get a man from Argos phoning me saying, do you want to place a second reservation just to really, really secure it?

Otherwise, we can cancel your first one.

That doesn't work.

And I think if I was to play devil's advocate here, I think probably there are car sales businesses where they would be happy to, you know, like in the case of Yaris, if someone reserved it and left a refundable deposit,

they're happy to take a car off sale for, let's say, five days, maybe with a view that they might have a customer, but yours doesn't operate like that.

You know, you, you're trying to turn these cars very quickly.

Not everyone is necessarily.

And I suppose if you were a big car supermarket, you know, that Yaris is one of seven Yaris is probably, isn't it?

So you could probably afford to say, well, that one's taken.

But for you, you're thinking, I kind of need to get rid of that car now, you know, it's approaching.

It's, it's 30 days that I've had it in stock and I want rid.

So of course I am going to take the one that actually says they want to buy it.

So yeah, it is, it is very difficult.

I mean, if I personally, if I were, and we're AutoTrade right here to defend themselves,

I, I would make it an optional thing because it doesn't necessarily work for all businesses.

It's just not how some businesses want to run is what I would say.

I would do exactly the same.

You know, and I think, you know, the, it should be optional.

And actually, if it works for us as a business, if it worked for us as that clever car collection, we would 100% do it.

And then it, the ball would sort of be an AutoTrade is caught to make sure it does work and that the customers do continue to contact you in the same way.

I mean, it's okay.

We're in a quieter time of, of year.

I don't think this was the right time to launch this product is my opinion.

I think it's probably had the backlash it has had because of the timing.

Yes.

You can't, you kind of, you naturally think, oh, there's a new product in place.

That's why I'm quiet.

Not because of, I mean, we're sort of spirited saying that in the intro.

But yeah, there, there is a, there's a tendency isn't there in, in car sales, there's a tendency to go, why am I quiet?

Let's find a reason when actually it can be a whole manner of different things.

But it's a bit of both, I think.

And I think the other changes that they've made to the platform making people sign in, I think is has caused just as many problems making people sign in before they can send an email.

I do think has caused some, some issues with getting the leads through and the dealers I'm talking to are saying the same thing.

So I don't, I know it's quietened down a little bit on this, on the deal builder front.

They had a webinar on Wednesday with Qubit Kars, Liam from Qubit Kars.

He hosted that and asked the dealer questions to Catherine and a couple of others from Auto Trader.

There were some very awkward questions placed.

And it was clear that the feeling in the, in the automotive industry at the moment towards this is still very, very strong.

I don't think it's going to go away, especially all the while this is going to become mandatory.

I've heard that some people are not going to be transitioning onto this deal builder until maybe March.

So you've got this sort of two sided marketplace at the moment.

You've got some dealers who are on it, some who aren't.

Well, you know, I don't think that personally, I don't think that is completely fair because if you're going to mandate this for the entire market, you need to do it.

Otherwise, those consumers who are looking for a car might scroll past the one where they have to reserve it and go to the next car where they can just contact the dealer via normal email.

So I think there are some, some, some changes that they need to make.

Craig, have you seen this fallout from this, from this deal builder thing?

Has it crossed your desk in any way?

I've been following it on car dealer actually the past week.

I mean, it's not just deal builder, is it?

Also the pricing Auto Trader appears to upset quite a few people in the industry at the minute.

I'd say I'm not delved into it in any great depth.

But to me, the whole idea of, you know, reserving a vehicle, the way that they're operating is targeted purely at large businesses, surely the small independent trader seems to have been forgotten.

Certainly my perception from that and also the pricing policy is that, you know, small independent traders don't necessarily have the perfect platform anymore to sell their cars.

Maybe it's time to go back to how it used to be in the sense and bloat round with a camera and get a postage-sized photograph and a raggy old Auto Trader that you can read on the toilet.

I don't know.

I remember when my brother was selling cars back in the day and the Auto Trader rep used to turn up, take the photos for him.

Yes, they had to really carefully craft that like one line because he used to have a list of cars with one line about the car and the price, but it was absolutely vital back then.

It's all those abbreviations, wasn't it? You had to work out what they were.

Yes.

So.

Yeah, the car sales course through.

SHRW.

EWCL.

No, you lost me now.

Anyway, John, that's my first story.

Commended to your house.

Over to you.

Thank you.

I'm going to do some exciting news, James.

Oh, God.

It's fishy.

Oh, yes.

It's back, is it?

Well, it's not back yet, but it will be back next year.

Will it?

Yes.

So as we know, Mitsubishi went away just after the COVID pandemic.

Was it during the COVID pandemic?

It was about 2020.

And it disappeared in 2021.

So they announced it in 2020 and it went into 2021.

It did.

So a bit of a weird, a bit of a refresher of the weird situation that happened there.

I think they, because I think I was actually in Mitsubishi HQ just before it was all announced as well.

I think we're doing some sort of video with them.

And it all seemed very rosy in COVID.

And then Mitsubishi Global said, we're not making cars for Europe anymore.

And then Mitsubishi UK went, oh, that's not great.

Better wind down operations then.

And then about, I don't know, six weeks later, Mitsubishi Global went, oh no, actually,

we are going to carry on in Europe by which point everyone has been told their franchise was going, you know, whatever.

Mitsubishi UK obviously decides to carry on with closing down.

And so Mitsubishi has been continuing in Europe during this time, but all they've had is rebadged Renault's.

And I think the Outlander might have appeared, the new Outlander, which is like a dressed up Nissan X-Trail plug-in hybrid.

But they are coming back to the UK next year.

It has been announced, which seems like I can't quite get my head around the timings of this.

It's been five years, or it will have been five years since they disappeared.

All their dealer network has long since either retired in some cases or brought in other brands or given up bits of their showroom.

Everyone's brought in Chinese brands.

Is there going to be any dealer network left for Mitsubishi to come and have?

And then the cars that they're going to bring in, I mean, they haven't said which ones they're going to bring,

but they've suggested that it will come from Mitsubishi's global lineup, which says to me perhaps because we're right-hand drive,

we will get some cars that Mitsubishi don't sell in Europe.

So Mitsubishi in Australia, for example, sells the Shogun Sport still.

So maybe that will come back, but I would say it's very unlikely because it's quite a polluting thing.

There's the new version of the L200, I would suggest we probably will get that.

I think that's about the only thing they can bring that's not in Europe already.

The Outlander PHEV probably, which I think is by this point quite a good car.

They launched a new version in about 2022.

But again, it'll be four years old by the time it arrives here if it's coming here.

And then you've got all the rebadged Renault's.

So they rebadged the Renault Scenic Electric.

They're going to have to do that to bring some form of electrification to get under the Zev Mande.

There's the Colt, which is a Clio, which is about to be replaced, I assume, by a new Clio Colt thing.

And then there's another sort of generic SUV thing that I can't remember.

But who's going to sell these is my question, James.

I think they've still got quite a few service outlets.

So you would assume that those service outlets would be given first refusal on them

because they've still got a little bit of a customer database.

But I wrote about this in my substat this week because I'm amazed they've decided to bring this brand back.

I mean, I used to like Mitsubishi and we've sold a lot of them used cars

and they've still got a very low following.

They're pretty well built.

We'd never had many problems with them and they always sell really fast.

So I was always baffled that they did reverse out of the UK.

When we were out in Japan, John, we saw a few on the road, didn't we?

And we said, it's such a shame that they disappeared.

We saw a few of the newer models.

And I think we were even talking then that we think it might come back one day.

And then lo and behold, here it is.

My issue with this is they're always known as an SUV brand, predominantly an SUV brand.

And they're going to be entering a market that is absolutely congested with loads of Chinese SUVs.

So it is going to be very, very hard to differentiate what they're selling.

And also, is the brand strong enough?

We've seen that really it's a price point market now.

Chinese really are doing it.

Are they going to be able to make a success?

Craig, what do you think?

I'm going to make a counter-argument here because I'll give you a bit of a case study.

So I'm going to have to be careful not to name names, but a dealership local to me.

I know for a fact they're very, very interested in taking on a Mitsubishi franchise

as and when the opportunity arises.

And the reason being that they're a small business that serves the local community.

And that's where Mitsubishi always did really well in the past.

You look at other similar sized brands like Subaru, for example.

This particular dealership had a brand with a very well-known,

sorry, had a franchise with a very well-known Chinese brand that's grown substantially over the past few years.

And they've gone to this dealer who was one of their most successful dealers

with a really good customer loyalty rate, really high standards.

And they've said, sorry, you're not big enough for us anymore.

So you're out.

The Chinese brand has basically said this.

So they've been put on notice.

And they're looking at Mitsubishi because their customer base,

which is in a rural part of the country,

the type of vehicles that they sell, the Mitsubishi brand, it all aligns with their customer.

And the dealership in question is a former Mitsubishi dealership as well.

I think they're keen to have it back.

So I think if their ambitions are correct,

if they target the right kind of outlets with the Mitsubishi brand,

there's a real opportunity there for some of the smaller non-group dealerships

and the family-run dealerships to pick up a franchise that could actually be quite profitable for them.

Yeah. I mean, I think it always was a very good, successful franchise.

There was a lot of dealers who did very well with it.

So I think a lot of it's going to come down to the product, isn't it?

Because I don't, well, I mean,

the local dealers will be able to sell probably the rebadged Renault or whatever.

But I think people really want the heavy duty Mitsubishi's that can tow things.

And I don't know if it's just an outlander PHEV, if that's their biggest thing.

We will see, John.

We will see, won't we?

Move us on, James.

I will move us on.

And I'm going to pick a story again that I wrote about in my sub-stat this week,

because I found this really interesting.

This is news that Van Mosel, Mosel John or Mosel?

I think it's Mosel because it's got two Ss.

But I don't know.

I don't speak Dutch.

No, Van Mosel.

Van Mosel has joined the UK by snapping up Breeze Motor Group and Ocean Ocean Motor.

If I say join the UK, they're already sort of here.

Two years ago, they bought Jackson's,

which was a dealer group that operated in the Channel Islands, Isle of Man and the Isle of White.

That business represented 29 different car brands across six sites.

So some quite multi-franchised dealership locations in that group.

They bought that two years ago.

Since then, they've been steadily growing, buying some businesses in Germany.

But I was sort of thinking like, who is this Van Mosel?

I mean, it is a business that we've heard of.

Who is this Van Mosel?

And how dare they come into the UK in this way?

No, I was just, I wanted to look into them a little bit further.

Unfortunately, this week, there was some research that was released by Automotive News Europe and ICDP,

looking at the biggest dealer groups in the UK, of which Van Mosel is one of them.

They were fifth largest group in Europe in 2024, revenues of 6.2 billion euros.

And just to give that some perspective, John,

that puts them ahead of Arnold Clark and Virtue in the top 10 tables.

So they're a big business just based in Europe, predominantly in the Netherlands.

They're a Dutch firm and that has...

What you call Benelux, isn't it?

It's Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg.

I saw that in a story that we wrote and I didn't want to repeat it

because I thought it was an awful term.

Is that an actual thing?

It's Benelux.

Sounds like the sort of thing you take when you've got a cold.

But yes, they are a big group, this Van Mosel.

And this purchase this week, it was actually announced yesterday,

saw them by these two businesses just down the road from us, actually.

Breeze Motor Group owns Volkswagen, Suzuki and Ducati franchises,

also a successful Breeze camper van business.

While the Ocean Automotive business has got Audi and Volvo down in the pool area,

Audi and Volvo franchises.

Both of them turn over about £150 million, £180 million a year.

So not inconsiderably sized businesses.

But it's a foothold, isn't it, for Van Mosel in the UK.

It shows that they are very serious.

I spotted again on LinkedIn this morning a message from the new MD,

guy called Andrew Lean, former Marshall Motor Group Volkswagen director,

who has taken charge of the Van Mosel UK business.

He said, now the deals are done, he can talk about this exciting new adventure

and the exciting UK market.

He says Van Mosel is an amazing organisation that manages to maintain a huge scale

while pulling off a family friendly culture.

He's looking forward to the future.

And it sounds like, according to their CEO, that they are serious about the UK.

There could be some more.

I just wonder how many more of these small family dealer groups

that will be left to snap up for businesses like this.

We've seen a lot of acquisitions, haven't we, in this market over the last few years.

But I just thought it was interesting to see a different player.

Not an American company come in.

They've obviously snapped up the likes of Pendragon, Jardine, etc. etc.

It was nice to see one of the Europeans come in and start to get bigger.

Of course, we've seen that with heading too.

So it's like all of the UK-based businesses are slowly getting picked off

by these investors from other countries.

Perhaps this is just the way it's going, isn't it?

You can't, as a small family dealer group, particularly running European brands,

I suspect, it's tough times, isn't it?

And when this absolute behemoth comes along and says we can take it off your hands

and we'll make it run a bit leaner through economies of scale and so on and so forth.

Yeah, I don't think there are going to be many left probably by the end of the decade, James.

No, I thought it was interesting too, because this is a brand I came across

in the Isle of Man when I was there over the summer.

Because of course, I saw that.

I don't think they've got there.

I feel like I saw it on some branding, but I think they've retained all the same

dealer group brands and things.

And of course, if you go over to the Netherlands, you see it everywhere.

You see enormous dealerships, a fan mussel on.

I don't think that brand would do quite so well here.

I think they're probably better off keeping the existing ones, but we'll see, won't we?

We'll see what they do.

Yeah, interesting news.

Did you see it, Craig?

Pete, your interest at all?

I did. Yeah, they're all going to be selling Mitsubishi soon, aren't they?

Quite impossible.

I thought it was interesting that they're mostly Volkswagen group businesses.

Because they have had a little bit of a tough time.

Volkswagen, especially over the last few years, they've struggled a little bit

in terms of performance.

Audi too, I've heard, is a quite hard franchise to represent at the moment.

So they're interested in that these guys have decided, the family owners

decided now's the time to sell up.

But we will read into that, what we will, John, over to you.

I'm going to keep it car-y again and talk about the Ford Focus,

which this year has died.

The last one rolled off the production line in Salui,

which I believe is in Germany, possibly, after 27 years is dead.

Which is very sad because, you know, the Ford Focus,

well, I mean, in two minds about this, because we have to remember how the Ford Focus came to be.

It killed off a very popular product line in the Escort,

and then we went, wow, this is an exciting new car,

and now it's just become part of the furniture, hasn't it?

Something like the Ford Focus.

But I think it's interesting to talk about in the context of the landscape we're in

with all these new brands coming along,

and Ford slowly removing, or actually relatively rapidly,

killing off all their familiar historic product names and products.

So it won't be replaced. There will be no hatchback Ford,

because, of course, it's a C-segment hatch, which not many people are buying at the moment,

apart from VWs still seem to make them for people, and CES and so on.

So, sad times. This is the end of the Ford Focus.

I have no more to say.

Apart from, I just think it's a mistake, I think it's a poor choice,

and I understand why they've done it.

It's to free up production for EVs, which, unfortunately, no one's buying.

I do wonder what's going on with Ford, though.

It just seems like these sorts of decisions are baffling, really.

Going back to Craig's point about how Vauxhall has changed over the years,

Ford used to be this massive, massive business here in the UK,

and now just seems to be shedding dealers left, right, and centre to the Chinese,

and haven't really got the model line up to cope.

That's very, very strange. Craig, what do you think on this?

I mean, are you sad to see the Focus go?

I'm very sad to see the Focus go. I make you feel old here as well,

because I actually sold the Mk1 Focus yesterday.

But the interesting thing about it is the buyer is the National Motor Museum at Beulie.

So, that's what's happened to the Mk1 Focus. It's now an old car.

Ford, I mean, one thing I didn't touch on before when we were talking about the things

that I'm up to at the moment is I'm also quite involved in depth in the modern van industry.

So, I do tend to follow the van side of the automotive business quite profusely.

Ford, I mean, the best-selling vehicle in the UK is the Ford Transit at the moment.

Ford makes a lot more money out of transits than it does out of passenger cars.

They don't have to have as much tech in them. They don't have to be as refined.

They don't have to be as developed, I guess.

And I think they've realised that their European business model

could actually entirely exist around transit.

So, you know, Focus is one of the things that's gone one day.

Obviously, it went a couple of years ago. Fiesta's gone.

Are they going to give up on cars completely is my question.

That would be very, very sad.

That would be very sad.

Let me wedge one more in because we have got a bit of time.

And can I just pick the story?

The Group 1 has confirmed the closure of two more dealerships.

This follows the news that it was actually in all of its JLR sites

that we revealed on the Cardino Magazine website.

But these two that it's getting rid of, one is a BMW Mini site in Stansted.

And the second one is one in Hindhead.

And that's one that we know quite well because we're based not far from Hindhead.

Whenever we're heading to London on the A3, you can spot this huge BMW dealership

that they created on the side of that busy A road.

The problem, I think, with it is nobody really knows how to get into it.

It's kind of one of those ones that's sort of hidden away.

One of the sort of ones that you pass at 70 miles an hour and go,

oh, I must pop into there one day and they never actually do.

But these are very, very big sites.

That Hindhead one, they rumoured to spend multi-millions building that site

because it is incredibly impressive.

Very, very modern one.

I don't actually think it can be much older than five years, John.

No, it was during the pandemic it was being built, I remember.

It was, wasn't it?

And yeah, they've decided to close that.

So, interesting that Group One, after buying all of these businesses

and putting them all together, is looking at its portfolio

and thinking some of them are not quite right.

Those JLR ones have all been moved on, as I've mentioned.

Now two more sites are going as well.

It just, I think it's a bit of a sign of the times.

What did you think?

Well, I understand the JLR one can be read in lots of different ways

because you've ripped Jaguar out of a lot of them.

Wait, 99% of them really have had Jaguar.

Well, 100% of them have had Jaguar ripped out in the short term, haven't they?

And this year, Land Rover's not had a particularly smooth transition into not being cyber hacked.

But BMW, BMWs, I mean, are they the, am I right in saying,

number one of the premium brands in the UK?

Is that still the case or has Audi overtaken them?

They're a big, big seller.

And, you know, Hind Head is one of those, it's in Surrey,

just Surrey Hampshire border, very leafy, very posh.

Prime customer base for it.

The same with the other ones near Stanstead,

so that's Bishop's Stortford, isn't it, again?

Quite an expensive area to live.

It's that quote in my head that, well, I think it was,

was it John O'Hannon said this about Jaguar and VW and so on,

or was it Dash Gupta, if you can't make those kind of brands work in the home counties,

then something's gone wrong.

And I think if you can't make BMW work in a posh bit of Essex

and a posh bit of Surrey Hampshire, something has gone drastically wrong.

Yeah, I mean, Groupon, what other brands do they have?

I know they've got Toyota, they've got loads of different things.

This is not just a scaling down.

This is quite specifically scaling down the posh end of it, isn't it?

Well, I just always find it mad that after buying these businesses

and spending so much money on them, they decide that very, very rapidly

to either move them on or sell them off.

It's, sorry, move them on or close them down.

I just find that quite shocking, really.

I just, you know, why buy them anyway?

Why not sell them to someone else right at the start?

Strange. I don't know.

But anyway, that's my last story, John.

Okay. So Craig, before we ask your verdict, are there any stories

you think we should have talked about this week, but we haven't?

I mean, I can see on my list I had from the roundup on today,

Asda to sell off stores, which I thought James would cover.

Well, I was interested.

I was interested, everybody.

It was just a sale and lease back, so not quite as exciting.

Okay.

Probably not from my perspective, to be honest.

Largely, because I wasn't expecting the question, and I've got nothing wrong.

That's absolutely fine.

That's why I don't prep you for it, because you go,

No, no, you've covered all the stories.

Well done, panic.

Okay. So I'm going to have to ask you,

what was your favourite story or who chose the best stories?

My favourite story this week is a bit of a special story,

because I quite like the brand, to be honest.

I like the idea that it's coming back.

Who doesn't like a Shogun or an L200, really?

Or could we see a Mitsubishi Evo again?

It's quite a lot of excitement attached to that, if you think about it.

And also, I do think that the return of an established brand to the market

might not seem to be a particularly forward-looking thing,

but it could actually be a really clever bit of business.

Well, certainly, I mean, if anyone's going to make it work, it's I am, isn't it?

Maybe.

It's all going to buy a Renault Scenic, right?

Do you go and buy your Renault Scenic from your multi-brand faceless dealership?

Or do you go to your local Mitsubishi dealer who'll send you a Renault Scenic

with a Mitsubishi badge on it, and make a real effort to look after you

and have a face-to-face first-name relationship with you as a buyer?

I think I'd probably go for that.

I'll answer that with which one is cheaper.

That would be my answer, but anyway, I won't alienate you too much

since you've chosen me as the winner.

Thank you very much.

Well, congratulations, John. What are the scores on the doors?

I have no idea, James.

I knew you would know, and I don't care.

I don't believe it. I care. We need to know.

You just don't care enough to have written it down anywhere, obviously.

Well...

Well done, anyway. Well done.

Well, that's it for this week's episode.

All that's left for me to say is thank you to Craig for coming on today.

What did you have?

Hopefully, we've gained you a few listeners

and some buyers of a nice 406 executive with Roosh Debra.

Do get in touch.

And thank you as well to James for not drinking the large bottle of wine

that's on the table behind him.

I don't drink it. That's from my dad. It was his birthday.

But nice to see you, Craig, and best of luck with your podcast.

Thank you very much.

0:00

65:16

Mitsubishi to return to the UK, Ford Focus finishes production, and Van Mossell snaps up UK dealers – with Craig Cheetham, episode 232

Alfa Romeo 916 Spider

Jaguar XJ8

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