Car Dealer Podcast Nov 28, 2025

Pay-per-mile EV tax, Audi and Mercedes dropped from Motability, and IMDA members' thoughts on Deal Builder – with Sam Luscombe, episode 233

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Brand

MG

MG is a car brand that makes different types of vehicles, including electric cars. It used to be more popular in the past and is now coming back with new models.

Term

EV

An EV, or electric vehicle, is a car that runs on electricity instead of gas. They are better for the environment because they don't produce exhaust fumes.

Car

Suzuki Jimneys

The Suzuki Jimny is a small SUV that can go off-road and handle rough terrain. It's popular because it's fun to drive and can fit in tight spaces while still being tough.

Company

Dealerway

Dealerway is a website where car dealers can sell cars they take in trade. It helps them sell these cars faster and for more money without charging seller fees.

Car

Kia Picantos

The Kia Picanto is a small car that's great for driving in the city. It's easy to park and uses less fuel, which makes it a good choice for people who want a simple and affordable vehicle.

Brand

Mitsubishi is a car company from Japan that makes different types of vehicles, including cars and SUVs. They are known for being reliable and have a history in racing, which makes their cars exciting for some drivers.

Brand

Lexus

Lexus is a luxury car brand from Japan, part of Toyota. They are known for making reliable and comfortable cars with lots of high-end features.

Brand

Volvo

Volvo is a car brand from Sweden that is famous for making safe and reliable vehicles. They focus on protecting passengers and the environment.

Brand

Alfa Romeo

Alfa Romeo is a car brand from Italy that makes luxury vehicles. They are known for their unique designs and sporty cars.

Brand

Mercedes-Benz

Mercedes-Benz is a well-known German car brand that makes luxury vehicles. They are recognized for their quality, safety, and innovative technology.

Brand

Polestar

Polestar is a car brand that makes electric vehicles. It started as a performance division of Volvo and now focuses on eco-friendly cars.

Brand

Land Rover

Land Rover is a British car brand that makes luxury SUVs designed for off-road driving. They are known for their durability and ability to handle tough terrains.

Brand

Nissan

Nissan is a car company from Japan that makes many different types of vehicles, including cars and trucks. They focus on new technology and eco-friendly options.

Car

Audi A3

The Audi A3 is a small luxury car that is well-made and has good performance. It's popular for people who want a nice car with lots of features.

Term

aspirational brand

An aspirational brand is a brand that people really want to own because it makes them feel good or important. It's often seen as high-quality or prestigious.

Term

residuals

Residuals are how much money a car is expected to be worth after a few years. If a car has high residuals, it means it won't lose value as quickly, which is good for buyers.

Car

Bmw 1

The BMW 1 Series is a small, fancy car that feels sporty to drive. People like it because it looks nice and holds its value well when you want to sell it later.

Car

Kia Ceed 1.6 GDI

The Kia Ceed is a small car that is good for everyday use. The 1.6 GDI version has a special engine that helps it use less gas while still being fun to drive.

Car

Toyota Corolla

The Toyota Corolla is a small car that many people use to get around because it's reliable and doesn't use much gas. It's very popular and is often seen as a good choice for everyday driving.

Car

Jensen Interceptor

The Jensen Interceptor is an old sports car from Britain that looks really cool and has a strong engine. It's special because it's not very common and many people who love classic cars want to own one.

Term

fuel efficient

Fuel efficient means a car can go a long way without using a lot of gas. This is good because it saves money and is better for the environment.

Term

PHEV

A PHEV is a type of car that can run on electricity and gasoline. You can plug it in to charge the battery, which helps save on fuel costs and reduces emissions.

Term

electric vehicle (EV)

An electric vehicle is a car that runs only on electricity, using a battery instead of gasoline. This means it doesn't produce any exhaust fumes, making it better for the environment.

Company

Stellantis

Stellantis is a big car company that makes many different brands of cars, like Jeep and Dodge. It was created when two companies joined together.

Brand

Ford

Ford is a well-known car company that makes many types of vehicles, including trucks and sports cars. They have been around for a long time and are famous for models like the Mustang.

Car

Nissan Ariya

The Nissan Ariya is a new electric SUV from Nissan. It's designed to be eco-friendly and has a stylish look, making it a popular choice for those interested in electric cars.

Car

Tata Motors Aria

The Tata Motors Aria is a big car that can carry many people and their stuff. It's made by Tata, a company from India, and is meant to be a practical choice for families.

LIVE

Welcome back to the car dealer 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 this week I'm thrilled to say is headline speaker at the

Gossport Business Awards. James Baggett. James. Thank you for making time in your busy schedule of doing businessy things to join us today.

John, I hate you.

How dare you bring that up? Well, I thought it was going to be a secret.

No, I mean, everyone who's everyone in the Gossport area was there. So naturally I heard about it.

The guy who runs the vinyl shop just down the road from us was there. There was a guy there was the lady who runs the craft shop. They obviously wanted, you know, a local entrepreneur to talk about their business.

Unfortunately, they got me, etc, etc.

Yes, very good.

Well, did you have a good evening?

Did you manage to impart any wisdom?

No, well, actually, I did. To be fair, I talked a lot about AI and the journey that we've been through with Clever Car Collection, how we built the business with AI as much as possible.

And I think some people found that interesting.

It was, yeah, it was an enjoyable evening. Thank you for mentioning it, John. Let's talk about your hat instead because you're wearing it again.

It's a different hat, actually.

It's a new hat. Is this the one that's got some TV connection?

Yes, it does. But we're going to move on from that. We're going to move on from that, James, because we've had a busy week, haven't we?

Well, I mean, this is going to be a very quiet podcast because nothing's happened this week at all.

No, we've had a very busy week, haven't we? Let's save the awards for the stories because I think I'll probably put that one on my list.

But can I talk a little bit about AI at the moment? Because I've made some steps with the dealership in the last couple of weeks that I haven't mentioned recently.

There's some interesting things that we've put in place that I thought some people might find interesting.

One of those is we've been working with Moneypenny, which is a cool answering service where if you, a small business like us, and end up missing phone calls, it's pretty annoying if you miss a lead.

You know, if you get a call from auto trader customer or something and you miss that phone call, it's quite annoying.

But if you're a small business like us and run your own business, it's very easy to do that.

But Moneypenny has got this solution powered by AI where they can pick up the slack.

So if it rings more than five times, people will get an AI-generated version of me, John.

Sounds great, doesn't it? Sounds great. That bit needs a little bit of work.

But actually what it does do is very clever. You can talk to this AI, ask it a few questions about the cars we've got in stock, which has got a little bit better as we've been training it.

And it will take a message, and importantly, send Joe and I a message saying someone's called, which I just think is a really clever way of using AI.

So we've got that in place. And there's a couple of other things that we've started using.

In Delacit, we're on the beta testing for an answering system that they've got in place for leads, which we've found really clever.

So we've been using impale stuff in the past. We still use it on the front end of the website.

Actually sold us a car this week, which was quite nice.

I had a conversation with a customer who had a test drive, but did the final parts of it.

And I came in the next day to answer that and sell the car.

But this Delacit one is really smart because what happens is customers will send in an inquiry and Delacit will look at all of your information in the DMS and fire back a response.

It's getting and we're on the beta testing and giving them some some feedback along the way it's getting a lot better.

So I feel like I'm starting to make a little bit more progress on the AI front with this with this project.

I mean, it did get a little bit quiet on that front for the last couple of months as we just ended up doing what we were doing.

But now it's getting a little bit better.

So yeah, I just wanted to update you on that because it's been quite interesting.

You've tried the AI voice one, haven't you?

Yeah, it sounded like you if you'd had the lobotomy really.

I think it's partially in the way that you like they gave you some things to train the AI on with your voice that you had to read a script, didn't you?

Yes, yes.

Some of which I won't repeat because it was very strange.

But I think you you didn't read it in your normal.

I'm James Baggett and I'm talking like this.

Here's a lovely high and die.

What you said was I'm going to talk like this and then you were surprised perhaps.

Hi, I'm Ali or whatever it's called.

How can I help you today?

Yes, I'm sure we can assist you in that high and die.

It's a little bit work.

But what I would say is like in the year and a bit you've been doing this.

I remember when you told me you were going to do launch it with AI, as I was Johnson would say.

GPD.

GPD and we used a lot of GPD and we found that it was at the time a bit rubbish at doing what you actually wanted it to do apart from come up with a name.

It did that all right.

But now like it's in what's it been 12 months, 18 months and it's all so different.

The landscape has changed dramatically, hasn't it?

It's been two years, John.

It's been two years and he's in GPD.

It's got a lot better answer in my query.

So yeah, no, it's I'm persevering.

Let's put it that way.

In another 24 months.

Anyway, I'm going to move on now and introduce our guests.

If you don't mind, please do.

So our guest this week is managing director at Luscombe Motors and Leeds, Sam Luscombe.

Sam, lovely to have you.

Good morning.

How you doing?

Good.

Thank you.

Nice to see you, Sam.

How are things in Leeds?

Well, the sun's shining for a change, which is unbelievable enough.

But yeah, no, things things are pretty good up here.

Just about recovered from my hangover from Monday night's cardio rewards.

It was nice to see you there.

Thank you.

Thank you for coming along.

I mean, just on that, just before we get on to those things on that AI front,

are you dabbling with AI at all in your business?

We are, but we're doing it very much in the background.

I've been following your progress and all these.

These suppliers popping up in the ice base fairly closely,

but never really jumping straight in.

I've been using it a lot in the background.

Chat GPT has been my friend to build internal tools, that sort of thing.

I don't, I don't know coding.

I don't really pretend to,

but chat GPT can do lots of very clever things in there to build as internal efficiencies.

And I use it as a lot for a lot of help with consumer rights act inquiries and issues with where do we sit on this?

Because obviously it's quite subjective,

but getting, getting chat GPT to tell me exactly whereabouts in the many pages of that bit of legislation.

I need to find something so I can be absolutely sure on where we need to be on that.

Quite useful.

Following AM Live a few weeks ago.

Sorry, sorry, you broke up a little bit there, but please carry on.

Other trade expos are available, I'm sure.

Thank you.

Just chatting to a lot of, a lot of these companies, I mean, they're everywhere now, aren't they?

You can't walk around one of those without bumping into somebody selling AI

or renaming their business, something AI related.

So it's quite interesting.

And where I think we're going to use it is not necessarily to hand off to AI,

but my strategy is to get AI to do some of the things that our humans should do and in a perfect world would do,

but in the reality of daily life and dealership quite often forget or don't get a chance to do or,

and then lead follow-ups a great example and lapsed customers in the basis that salespeople and humans get a bit perturbed

after two or three attempts of trying, they take it personally that obviously is not interested.

If everybody who tried to sell me something gave up after two attempts,

then I'd never buy anything because I am fairly useless when it comes to taking calls on the mobile.

And I've had lots of suppliers who say, you're interested.

Well, I am, but you just catch me at the wrong time.

So if an AI bot or a bit of technology can do that, follow up five or six times

and can tailor it and not be just nagging somebody, I think that's quite powerful.

Yeah, I don't know anything.

That is a really useful use case for AI.

We've had success with that with the Impel solution where it was following up a lead

that we just would never have done.

I mean, people are lucky.

I mean, really, we're applied to it instantly.

We'll follow it up once.

But after that, we assume it's dead and you sort of move on, don't you?

But AI doesn't give up.

And this instance, it kept on messaging this person.

They were in a labor ward having a baby, had a very good reason not to be picking up the phone

and actually did sell the car eventually off the back of it.

We would never have got back in touch with them.

So I do think there is some use cases for it.

Let me move us on to some performance.

I mean, you had a fantastic year last year.

We published your recent accounts, didn't we?

£64.7 million revenue up from £64 million the year before,

but profit more than doubled up to £2.6 million.

Amazing results for a business of your size.

What was the secret?

It was a very good year.

You look back and go, what do we pin it on?

And to be honest with you, we've made general improvements across the business.

We've been very fortunate that we've picked the right franchise partners at the right time.

Obviously, the growth of MG has been for everyone there to see.

It's not been without its challenges, but we've actually got two things really.

Last year, we got really switched on with retail,

which has always got a good market area in Leeds.

We had previously been doing fairly well with EV,

and everything sort of just fit together at the right time there when it came to retail MG.

Used cars, obviously that proposition now is very strong because in the early years we had MG,

there was no real used car market for them.

That's now strong with a good supply, good value, long warranty.

It looks a very convincing proposition to the huge car buyer of Leeds and further.

But we've actually also, our business has always been a retail business.

Five years ago, when we took MG on, we started to get into fleet.

There was obviously with the BIK salary sacrifice and our art was changing.

We made a decision to get into fleet, and obviously that has grown massively.

I think we've tried to apply a bit of personality to how we do fleet,

because fleet can often be quite faceless and it's just admin team chatting to an admin team.

We try and be a bit more, I'll try and get involved.

Fleet companies can have my mobile number if they need, get involved with customer queries, that sort of thing.

Ultimately, people buy from people, whether it's a big thing via a salary sacrifice,

and there's five or six different people in the chain.

Ultimately, the decision maker still has all the same human emotions that a regular retail car buyer does.

So, yeah, no really good year.

Sam, tell people listening then who might not know about your business, just the makeup of it.

What's the business look like?

Just to take you back, for those who don't know, my old man's been around in the industry for about as long as his wrinkles would suggest.

To be honest, he's coming up to not far off 50 years, most of which were when he was a director of a regional Suzuki dealership up in West Yorkshire.

Decided in 2009, he came home one day and said, I've chucked my ticket in.

I'm like, you've done what?

He was using a good job, good salary.

And he said, yeah, I said, well, where are you going?

I've got anything lined up, I'm just going off to do something on my own.

Which in 2009, after the 2008 sort of financial crisis was, someone would say brave, someone would say stupid.

So he set up, after a few false dawns, he set up in Leeds, single site Suzuki dealership in 2010.

Took that on and in 2013 was offered the chance to take the freehold of the site, but that also included taking on the Mitsubishi business.

So from 2013 to 2020, we're a single site to franchise Suzuki and Mitsubishi dealer.

Aside from that, in 2010 I went off to university, waved goodbye, off you go, well done Dad, you crack on.

I'm off to university to drink too much and try and learn something.

And did a sandwich course where I spent a year in industry, came out of that and then sort of thought, well, I've done four years at university.

I've done a year in industry working at BMW. Do I really want to just come back in and work for the old man?

So I worked in London for a few years, decided that just coming back in and having that four years and then you're working for my dad probably wasn't going to be the right way to do it.

It felt like I'd only ever be able to do it a little bit less well than he did.

So went back to London, worked in digital marketing, startups, that sort of thing and had no real intention of coming back up until probably 2018 when I was working in digital marketing agencies,

working on some really sort of cutting edge stuff with Google and seeing how a lot of industries were digitizing and modernizing and e-commerce was coming and you look back at the automotive industry and thought, Jesus, we are miles behind here.

So I never really thought I'd come back and get involved in the business until that point where I was in a startup that you either know if a startup is going to go or not and I could just sense that it really wasn't going to go anywhere.

So yeah, came back in 2019 doing some of the digital tech stuff, just sort of closely following what Kazoo were starting to build and seeing how full page ads for cars would change.

So we built a new website and that was my job.

The old man said basically you are not getting anything involved. Don't even think about getting involved in selling cars or being operationally involved for at least a year because quite frankly you haven't got to clear what you're doing.

And I mean he was right. So we launched a new website in 2020 and it was perfect timing really because it was about to be ready.

It wasn't quiet and then suddenly COVID hit. Right, go. We are launching this website now. People can buy a car online, reserve a car online and all that stuff that we couldn't do previously, suddenly we could.

And that was phenomenal. We had a great time. It sounds a bit rotten. We had a great time over the COVID period because we were selling cars online and not many people were.

And that just sort of opened the floodgates really. And we took MG on in 2020 and obviously that was going to require us to extend our showroom, to have Mitsubishi and MG in the same showroom, which we would have done but obviously a few months later we got the Mitsubishi news and that sort of solved that problem.

So from that point forward we've been MG and Suzuki on a single site. That's been phenomenal growth and as of the new year we'll also be having a third franchise in a showroom that we went out on the site to a hot tub place.

So we'll be putting another Chinese entrant who are doing incredibly well in there from next year.

Can you say which one?

I don't see why not. I think...

I'm not sure if I can or not.

We won't put you in a difficult position.

We'll look in two months and see what's going on.

I think I can and get has been announced. There's a motor J-Coup.

Excellent. So we're best of luck with that. They seem to be absolutely flying at the moment.

Absolutely. Yeah. And I think it's the right time.

I think what we have over the past few years has been franchise opportunities come and go and you look at it and go.

I think a lot of the success is about being in the right franchise at the right time.

Yeah.

I think results across the industry, obviously September is typically result season. You see that.

You see that in the news about who's taking what franchise, who's getting rid of what franchise.

And a lot of the success in a new car franchise is back in the right house at the right time.

Sam, there'll be a lot of people listening to this who will have families running their businesses like your dad did

and want their children to follow them.

What would you say has been the challenge there for you as the son who's followed your dad?

Has it been an easy transition? Has it been an easy thing to do?

No. I think the first thing is deciding whether you really want to do it or if you're just doing it because that's the natural progression.

So it would have been very easy for me to go to university, come back and go, right, I'm going to work for my dad.

I didn't want to do that because, one, I wasn't absolutely certain that that was the career path I wanted to do.

And two, if I was going to do that, I couldn't just fall in line with what he'd already done.

Because my thought process on this was that he's got 25, 30 years of experience doing this.

I could never possibly ever think about coming in and doing what he's done with a year or two or three or even five years of experience.

My logic was I'd only ever do it 75, 80 if I was really good, 85% of what he could do.

Because if you're not bringing in something external, I didn't back myself to be able to do that.

Do you think you work harder as a result of following your dad?

It's like, I've got two daughters and a son and I'd love all of them to follow me into business.

But I just wonder whether they'll be put off by the fact that I'm there all the time.

I think we were a bit unsure about how we'd work together.

And I think that that's actually worked out much better than I expected because I'm bringing in a different perspective.

I accept that anything that's related to the evening experience, I mean, I still bring him now.

He was giving me a bollock in yesterday for ringing him eyes on holiday, which I can understand to an extent.

But I still bring up for advice on certain issues because that years and years and years of experience you can't replace.

You can't get it anywhere else.

But I come in with a different perspective on digital and one of our famous arguments was about T-card boards because he was old school.

And if you're going to sell a car, you need a T-card board and the T-card needs to go in the pack, which was all great.

And it all works until we suddenly had a thousand MGs on order.

I was like, right, where's your T-card board going now?

Fair point.

But no, I think getting involved in the family business is certainly initially we had at the time about 50 staff.

It's really important that the culture of the business doesn't just disintegrate with suddenly somebody being over promoted into a position because they've got the surname.

And that is a real challenge.

So one of the beauty and how it worked quite well for us was the fact that I was coming in with that different perspective on digital.

And I wasn't coming in and telling anybody how to do their job that they've been doing for years.

I wasn't operationally involved for a good 16 months.

And then when I was operationally involved, it was when the world changed.

Suddenly, everybody's learned experience about how to sell cars.

Well, you couldn't do that because you now need to be emailing these people.

You need to be live chatting them.

You can't invite them down for a test drive.

So it almost felt like overnight with COVID, the world changed and my experience then became more relevant.

So I think people got it.

With running a family business, from a single site, those are incredible numbers that we talked about.

I mean, there's a lot of family run car dealerships that are given up.

We reported last week, the Van Mosel ones, the Breeze Group and Ocean Automotive that decided to sell up.

Do you think it's tough running a single family run business like yours compared to those big groups?

Yes and no.

I think it depends.

Certain franchise networks are more set up for it.

Suzuki especially built their really strong reputation and built a network on the majority of them being owner driver businesses.

Some of them might be groups and slightly more sites, but it was primarily there's very few PLC groups within that network.

And that I think they really focused on what their strengths were and their strengths were being local heroes.

And that's where you see coming through in the customer service satisfaction results that are always right up there.

So I think from our perspective, it works with the franchises we've got.

I know that there's been movements over the previous few years from some of the big franchises, some of the big networks to say no, no, we want fewer representation partners.

We want you to have a market area and want you to have six or seven sites.

Now clearly, if we were under pressure from one of our manufacturers to say, no, no, you must now go and have six or seven sites across your local area.

It's a very, very different business.

We we're in a bit of a transition now from my dad's style of management, which is very much seven days a week eyeballs on everything management by walking around, having his finger on the pulse by by being here to a situation where with

scale when you've got fleet, which is not very tangible, not very visible when you've got additional franchises that there is a transition that you've got to make.

But I think doing it on a single site keeps that element of control.

I think we've had opportunities to grow in the past.

And you think, well, once you take it off a single site, those challenges and those headaches done half multiply.

So the strategy has been that we were fortunate to have a big enough site here in Leeds that we can grow on the site.

And that's that's what we're planning to do.

Tell me a little bit about this, this step then with with a motor jacu.

I mean, what does it look like setting up that new franchise?

I mean, it's a it's a big step for your business.

Haven't done it for five, five, six years.

What made you decide that now is the right time to do it again?

So we got on the site, we've got a showroom that we rented out to a hot tub jacuzzi jacuzzi place.

And it's it's one of those where you look at it and go, we weren't desperate.

It wasn't a case that we needed.

We didn't have a vacant showroom that we suddenly thought like we need to fill something.

It was the case that is there an opportunity that can that can come in and it has to be sizable enough that it can pay for the rates.

It can replace the lost rent and suddenly give us something else to the site.

And I think the motor jacu thing was an interesting one because as I'm sure I'll get into some of the stories.

We weren't we were obviously involved with Chinese electric cars with MG.

I think what really attracted us to a motor jacu was the fact that it's not an EV only brand.

And I think that the growth that they're seeing in the FEV market and the super hybrid systems is probably more indicative of the direction of travel for the general consumer.

I'm not sure that everybody is ready to go EV and I feel like that those hybrids and the plug in long range plug in hybrids are a great stepping stone from people who know they need to do something and a sort of being.

If you've got a carrot and stick analogy they're sort of being hit out of petrol cars.

But I think that's that's a really good, really good stepping stone and I think the product as the sales figures have shown is it looks good.

It's well finished. It's got a lot of it's got a lot of tech and it's comes in at a great price.

And Sam Mitsubishi has decided to make a return to the to the UK. I mean, I think that shocked us all.

Have you decided you want to get involved with them again?

We haven't made any firm decisions. I think we've we're also

I'm of the opinion that let's just we've built a very strong business but that's built very strong business and we've continued to have that very strong business by focusing really heavily on what we have got rather than putting a few things on the periphery.

And I think the results that we get are from being heavily, heavily involved and invested into the into the brands that we have got.

And therefore adding more and more and more, not just necessarily in the fact that it's another set of campaigns, another set of things to learn, but also just the management focus.

If you split somebody three ways rather than two ways, then you've got an extra 30% of their time split on something else.

And again, to do it to add another one in as well.

Do we lose focus on on the core would be my concern.

What's your grand plan? I mean, what would you what would you like to achieve with the business?

It's one of those.

I'm very competitive.

And I just like that at some point in the future, I look back and go, well, I can never have the same itched to scratch as my dad.

He took all the risk.

He put his house on the line.

He went, he went balls in to go, I'm going to make this work.

And if it had failed, it lost his house.

It lost everything.

So I'm not in that position where I've got that risk because he's built a very successful business.

But what I have got is this, this desire and urge to, to look back and go, well, yeah, he built it to a certain point.

But I then I can then put my standpoint and say, yeah, I took it a bit further or did a bit more.

What is that a is that an ego thing about growth?

Not necessarily.

I don't think turnover growth is something that we chase.

Do I want to make a bit more money, employ some more staff, have a, have a be a be a destination for people to come to buy cars in Leeds.

Yeah, absolutely.

Does that mean that we'll suddenly want to go and expand and buy sites in the local area?

Not sure.

I don't think so.

I think my focus at the moment is on making sure that we, we maximise absolutely everything we can out of this site.

And by adding another franchise, that's already going to be a big challenge.

And even now with the two franchises we've got, I still look at the business and go, there's, there's massive opportunities that we're not currently tapped into.

So by adding a third franchise, there's going to be, there's going to be more.

So I think there's always, there's always scale to improve what you've got before you chase something else.

And we're coming towards the end of this year.

I mean, how's this year been for, for you?

And what do you think next year is going to look like for the motor trade?

This year's touch wood.

This year has been a continuation of last year.

We're at a similar point to where we were this point last year.

Our financial year is, is, is made to June.

So I think we've had some benefit in the youth car market of a bit of stability.

There's not been wild fluctuations in youth car prices that we've seen in previous years.

So I think on that sense, we're looking pretty good.

2026.

Again, from our perspective, it's, it's, we're going to be busy with a new franchise.

That's obviously going to take some time, but we have to make sure that by focusing on this new thing,

the rest of the business still is, is as strong and positive as it has been.

What does 2026 look like for the motor trade?

I don't know. I think there's probably going to be a continuation of the theme that we've seen this year.

There's probably going to be a few more finding it difficult, not just dealerships, but also in terms of manufacturers.

I think there's going to be lots of other Chinese entrants that attempt to come to the market and some will, some will undoubtedly fail.

I think there's, there's plenty, plenty coming and not getting the foothold.

It's interesting. That's what I quite like about the motor trades.

You can't, you can't sit there and go, I know what's going to happen next year.

And one of the reasons I got into digital marketing was because you could be an expert in that field within six months because it moves so quickly.

And I like, I like the fact that the motor trade, we don't know.

And one of the things that we've done so well in the business is find, find a little opportunity and ring its neck.

So I know you've done, you've done your bit with, with Japanese imports.

Yes.

We've done the same Suzuki Jimneys were a thing for us.

Then we had used EVs when, when nobody else was really touching used EVs or the barge pole.

We had a really good go and made some good money.

So it's just finding that little opportunity next year and maximizing it really.

Yeah, you've got to be nimble, haven't you?

And I suppose there's a small business that affords you that opportunity.

Sam, thank you very much for joining us today.

It's been very nice to hear about your business, but there's lots to talk about in a week of news.

So we should probably do some stories, John.

This is a paid partnership in association with Dealerway.

John, guess what?

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

No ducks, John.

Wrong there.

I've actually got a new habit.

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

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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, Sam gets to decide which one of us chose the best ones and who's the winner.

Apparently I won last week, I think by talking about Mitsubishi, weirdly enough.

So I am going to start.

I mean, as you say, James, there's been a lot of stuff.

I'm going to be very easy to bundle it all into one story and we'll be here all for an hour.

So I'm going to break it up slightly and go chronologically.

So the first thing that happened this week, apart from used car awards, obviously, is the changes to motability.

So this was announced Monday evening, but sort of, yeah.

Just as you were busy marching awards on stage to hand to Mike Brewer to march back into the wings.

Exactly.

This is a top job for someone else to do it.

Yes.

But it seems to have all come as a bit of a surprise.

Well, OK, so here are the changes to the motability scheme, which everyone knows about already.

The big thing is premium car makers in quote marks premium have been removed from the motability scheme.

So in the government's eyes, that means Alfa Romeo, strangely, Audi, BMW, Lexus and Mercedes-Benz, not Volvo, strangely, which I would call a premium car maker,

not Polestar, which you could sort of call a premium car maker.

And I mean, it's a fine line, isn't it?

Things like Land Rover aren't in there anywhere, I don't think.

Also, all coupé and convertibles are no longer eligible on the scheme.

So they've gone.

I didn't realize there were any convertibles in there anyway, to be honest, or any convertibles on sale that were sort of suitable.

Anyway, they've gone.

From 2035, half of all vehicles leased through motability will have to be British built.

Not sure on how much British builtness they have to be, but that's good news for people like Nissan and Toyota with the Corolla, etc.

And Mini, because many are still in there, despite being a premium brand.

And this, it all seems to sort of come out as a bit of a surprise.

Lots of car makers, well, all car makers were surprised by this news, particularly those premium manufacturers, some of which you spoke to James,

who were less than pleased about...

I mean, some people were a little bit swearing on the phone when I spoke to them.

Interesting.

What I can't well, actually, this kicks in literally on Monday, doesn't it?

The 1st of December.

So any orders that are already in will be fulfilled, but you can't go to your Mercedes dealer or whatever and get your motability car renewed after that.

It's just gone.

What I found slightly strange about all this is this seems to be, from my perspective, entirely ideologically driven.

Because there's no business sense of this in terms of, you know, these, these cars are not costing the government any more money.

Because the way that motability works is you give up your personal independence payment or your war pensioners pension or whatever it's called,

where you've, you know, lost a limb in Afghanistan or whatever, you get, you're also eligible for motability.

You give up that amount of money, which is a set amount based on how the government determines how much you need.

And any additional payment you need to pay up front.

So if you were going to go have an Audi A3, for example, you would be giving motability an initial payment of three and a half grand say initial payment and then your PIP would cover the rest.

So the top up the payments, John, like they could, they would have had to have top up the monthly payments on as well.

So.

Oh, really? Okay.

Well, so as far as the government is concerned, they're still paying the same amount out.

What this has just done is limited the choice for people on this scheme.

And I don't want to get into my personal opinion on my champagne socialist left leaning horse is that people should be allowed to have whatever they like.

And we have to remember the people on motability, people using this scheme, very broad range of people, as I say, people that lost limbs in wars,

people that have disabilities in general, they've had lifelong.

It's a lot of different people, people who can work, people who can't work, et cetera, et cetera.

It's a lot of different people.

And this seems like a sort of punching down to say, you can't have a nice thing, which I find a bit frustrating.

But of course, it's been, as I say, very frustrating for those manufacturers who suddenly overnight have had the rug pulled out from underneath them.

I think it's affected some more than others.

So I think Mercedes only had one or two cars on this scheme anyway.

I think Audi had quite a few.

Alfa Romeo had two, I don't know about Lexus.

But to suddenly be, you know, selected and said, well, yeah, Volvo's fine.

For example, Coupre, I would argue, is an aspirational brand at this point.

They're fine.

But how do you know we're going to have that?

James, but they are.

They're a sporty brand.

You know, I found it.

What is this saying?

What is what is the argument behind this that people can't have a Mercedes versus a Toyota or a Nissan or whatever?

I don't really get it.

I completely get it.

I totally understand why they've done it.

It's because of Mr. Nigel Farage.

They are worried about what the voters are thinking.

And they, this is a completely unlabeled policy.

This is completely against what they're doing.

Like, you know, as you've rightly pointed out, it goes completely against what they stand for.

But yet they, you know, they're struggling in the polls.

They're going to be out of the next election.

So they're trying to do what they can to pacify those people that are going to vote on the right.

You know, this is, this is a, this is a Tory stroke.

What are they called now?

Reform party, you know, a policy really, isn't it?

I was, I was very surprised by it.

I think there's obviously been a lot of briefings ahead of this.

You know, I was reading about this in the papers a good few months ago that this was this was coming.

So the manufacturers knew that there was going to be potentially something going to be changed.

They just didn't realise the timing.

I mean, the fact that this was leaked.

No, it wasn't leaked.

Sorry, the fact this was announced on Monday before the budget.

This was a budget policy that was that came out officially on Monday.

It's bonkers really.

I think the manufacturers were surprised by that.

They, the contacts that I spoke to said the exec teams were absolutely fuming at this.

You know, some of them were threatening legal challenges to it, not that that's going to have any impact,

but they were really, really cheesed off with it.

You know, I agree with you.

I think people should be allowed to choose which cars they want because if they're the ones that their payments don't cover,

they paid more for them.

Just to throw in before we hand this over to Sam.

There was a reason you could have something like a BMW 1 series on this is because the residuals are pretty good.

And this is, you know, it's the first three years of this car's life.

And probably, you know, if you went onto this, onto the Motability Scheme website,

something like a one series or an A class when they were still on there,

probably cheaper than having, let's say, a Kia Seed 1.6 GDI,

Xtronic or whatever, you know, like because the residuals are so much better on those cars.

So it's, it's part of it is just, it's just nonsensical.

The problem, John, Motability has become a political hot potato.

You know, it's one of those things where they kind of, some people don't like it.

And they have to sort of kind of play to that if they want to win votes.

And that's when I don't really agree with these sorts of policies.

It's a vote winner in my mind is what they're trying to do when they're really, really struggling.

Sam, I don't know what's your opinion on it.

Yeah, I agree.

I think it's definitely a political policy because if it wasn't going to be and it wasn't for that purpose,

you'd set a monetary cap, surely.

Exactly.

I think maybe I'm wrong with this, but I do, as I understand it,

the Motability scheme does cost the government more than just handing out PIP for the fact that somebody

who was going to buy a 50-gram BMW, for example, that that car is not then that doesn't pay any fat.

When it comes back into the used car network as a margin car,

the revenue that's generated through VAT is far, far less than a car that was sold brand new

to, for example, the bloke lady who could afford to buy a BMW and keep their PIP separately.

So I think there probably is an element of revenue driving, but I think you're absolutely right.

There is scrutiny.

They've had to wind back on their PIP reform, haven't they?

The backbench is so potentially it's a way to get some of that favour back in from the voters.

Do you think it's going to make any difference to the fact that they've excluded these premium brands?

Do you think they should have done others?

Do you think they should have done any at all?

I mean, what do you think?

I mean, the scheme has grown massively, probably quicker than it probably organically should have done,

because of the cost of insurance and servicing going up so much after COVID.

So somebody who's in receipt of PIP and then looks at the value of a car now,

I think a car on the scheme looks better valued than receiving your PIP than it or certainly more so than it ever used to do.

So I don't know.

As a car dealer, I'm sat here thinking that motability is a very important part of our business.

Yeah, I was going to say, do you do much on motability?

We do, yeah, absolutely.

And as somebody who looks after value brands, I don't ever dog in the fight.

I don't think we're suddenly going to sell more cars because the person who might now buy an MG can't buy a BMW,

but I can see both sides.

One thing I just want to touch on before we move on as well is, I mentioned it there, the 2035 is it the target for?

50%.

And I think there's an earlier one, 50% UK made cars by that point.

And strangely, I don't hate that target.

But I do sort of think if we're going down this route of support British manufacturing,

there also needs to be something in place for government procurement of cars, police cars, all that sort of stuff.

There's no reason that police can't go driving around in Toyota Corolla hybrid estates because they're kind of normal police cars.

I don't mean the police interceptor nonsense.

But, you know, there's lots of reasonably priced cars made in this country that are fuel efficient,

that, you know, your general Bobby's could go driving around in or local councils, et cetera, et cetera.

And that's, I'm not a nationalist, just to throw that out there by any means.

But like, look, look at other countries, other countries seem to do that very well.

You know, if you go to France, you don't see generally BMW police cars rolling around or Ford police cars,

whatever it's all Citroens and Peugeots and Renault's or go to Japan.

Obviously, it's the case, even Italy.

You know, we probably do need to go a little bit more.

I think the 2035 points interesting because by then 100% of cars will be EV.

Well, true.

What does that mean for the average motability customer?

A lot of them who obviously we don't know what's going to happen with off street parking and charging stuff for that point.

But the people just go, you know what, I don't really want an EV.

I'll just have a, I'll keep my paper and buy a used car.

Do you think if Nigel Farage does get in at the next election, as the poll suggests,

whether he would roll back all of these electric cars?

I mean, I don't actually know what his policy is on it, but can you imagine if he came in and I mean,

I don't know when the next election is, is it 28?

It is 28, isn't it?

Well, that's why a lot of these policies in the budget is so interesting because they're all timed for a long way in the future.

Yes.

I just wonder whether they just kind of, at that point, everything gets unwound.

Well, big stuff for us to write about.

Go on, James, move us on to the rest of the budget.

I will. Let me move you on.

I'm going to move you on to the budget because there was that,

frankly, balmy paper mile EV tax policy put in place.

Now, this morning I watched an interview with the Chancellor of the Exchequer on BBC Breakfast.

I saw the same one day.

When she was asked how this ridiculous scheme was going to work,

she couldn't even answer it.

She has no idea.

So just this scheme is designed to, it's a three-pence-per-mile charge for electric vehicles and a 1.5-pence-per-mile for plug-in hybrids.

Something that's very new, something that nobody really knew about or expected.

But the thing is nobody actually knows how this is going to work.

So I think from what I understand, from the reading I can do of this,

it will be an estimation that owners will have to make

and which will then somehow be checked by the government in some way.

I mean, this is open to abuse, isn't it?

When the Chancellor was asked on BBC Breakfast how this works,

she kept on referring to the MOT.

Well, obviously, that only works for used cars.

She was asked how it's going to work for new cars.

And at that point, she sort of froze and said,

we're going to look into this over the next few years.

I just think this will fail.

And I don't think it's going to become into place.

I mean, how do you do it?

The other thing is the MOT argument is the opposite way of doing it

to what's been suggested for the first three years.

So the first three years, as you say, it's an estimate.

So you go on to pay your VED and you type in how much you think

you're going to drive.

So the MOT one is the opposite end, isn't it?

It would be, well, we've checked your thing at the end of the room.

Well, maybe you estimated at the beginning of the year

you have your MOT and then the government goes,

well, you've done more miles, so you need to pay more money.

It's going to be incredibly complicated.

And that's why I just can't help thinking.

I sort of agree with the idea of charging electric vehicles

as similar amounts for petrol and diesels in principle

because they all use the same roads and they all cause the same potholes,

et cetera, et cetera, and they should be paying their fair share.

So I get that part of it.

What I don't like is the timing of this.

You know, the industry is struggling with electric vehicles anyway.

I mean, it has slowly picked up in the last couple of months

off the back of the electric car grant.

And then all of a sudden you have this policy moot it.

Well, this policy promise that's going to happen in 2008,

which is going to put everybody off all over again.

It just, it's these mixed messages that are so incredibly

unhelpful for the industry.

And the fact that they've included plug-in hybrids

just I think is bonkers.

Yeah, that one is absolutely right.

Let me just say what I would do if I was going to put something

in this place is why not just charge them more road tax, more VED.

Like there is a process in place to charge people for using the roads.

That is VED, that's road tax.

So why not put in place this new extra layer of admin?

I mean, who's going to have the time to do this?

And why should they have to do it?

It's absolute madness.

Well, the PHEV one is the particular insane point, isn't it?

Because I could just see this is going to drop, you know, kill.

Okay, it's not going to kill demand for PHEVs completely.

I mean, we had Eric Druze from Stellantis on what we were talking to him yesterday with me.

And he was sort of saying, I don't think this is going to put anyone off an EV.

I think, you know, it's monetary terms.

We're probably talking 300 quids on your bill at the end of the year.

And you will, if you've got a plug on your house to save so much money,

but PHEVs are going to be, this is my words, not his,

PHEVs are getting double taxed, really, because for the average PHEV driver,

or the average PHEV, you know, of its, I don't know, 600 mile range,

only 30 of it is electric, if that.

So if you're paying for, let's say, 500-ish miles of that,

your fuel duty plus the extra 1.5p.

So don't get the thinking behind the way, John.

Why on earth just come up with a pence per mile charge

when we don't charge anybody else, any other drivers that way?

It just seems bonkers.

You've got a way of charging people to drive.

Just use that.

It's like, it's like this government doesn't think.

It's like, just come up with...

Well, I tell you, just before I hand this over to Sam,

who's vigorously nodding away,

the interesting thing, I've listened to a couple of other podcasts about this

and to prepare myself for today, obviously.

And apparently this has generally been welcomed by economists.

You know, they've said this was always going to be a,

this black hole was coming down the road, no pun intended,

as soon as we started introducing EVs.

And it's been something that, you know,

the wider economy or people concerned with it have been worried about

that one day there is going to be no fuel duty,

which is an enormous earner for the government

and we are going to have to replace it with something.

Although this isn't perfect by any means,

it strangely has had quite a warm reception from people

that know something needs to plug that gap,

even though it doesn't really work.

Yeah, I mean, I suppose that is the point.

This is designed to replace fuel duty, isn't it?

The lost fuel duty, not the lost tax.

Anyway, I'm going to stop ranting.

Sam, it's over to you. What do you think?

I've seen, last night, I think they've published some more guidance on this

because you're right, when I saw that interview,

she didn't have a clue, did she?

No.

I think this morning they've said that for cars under three years old,

they're going to ask you to take it to an approved someone or other

to do a mileage check for cars under three years old.

What? Like, who's got the time for that?

Exactly. They just haven't thought this through at all.

I am sort of having a quick look through some of this.

I mean, it's gotten us how many pages,

27 page document of rubbish.

I mean, it's the political idea,

but then just, yeah, I understand the idea about charging it,

the mechanism of which to do it.

Because I think, obviously, you've also got lease companies.

Well, it's saying the registered keeper is in charge of doing this.

So, okay, so how does that work with the lease companies?

They've got to get in charge.

They're the registered keeper.

Another layer of admin to get involved with the driver.

And then you've got cars that are sold in that period.

So if you've, I think, again...

Under those three years, yeah.

If you've sold the car, but you've paid the tax,

what I'm getting from this, I've not read it in full detail yet,

is that you sell it with the tax on it

and that's then factored into the price of the car.

I mean, it's just, they haven't thought this through at all.

No.

I mean, just the idea behind it of trying to replace

the lost revenue from fuel duty, I do get that,

but you've got this conflicting message of carrot and stick.

And like, well, are we trying to incentivize people to go over?

You've got $37.50 for the odd couple of cars that qualify for it.

Oh, but by the way,

you're now going to have to pay this ludicrously complicated tax

that's going to penalize you every time you go to the shops.

I wrote about this in my sub-stat this week.

And as you pointed out, John, I did interview Eric Drew from Stellantis,

boss of Stellantis UK yesterday, and we talked about this at length.

He's very concerned about it.

He said that the industry has now got a job to do to push uphill a bit more

because we knew this decision was coming.

It was inevitable, he said, but we could have done without it.

And he's not the only one who's spoken out about this.

Lisa Brankin, the boss of Ford, said that no one denies

that EV owners need to pay their way when it comes to road tax,

but she feels like this is the wrong time to do it.

It's kind of adding an admin burden onto electric car buyers.

She said that your petrol diesel equivalent doesn't have.

I mean, she really has got a point there.

And Robert Forrester, he's done the rounds this week.

He's appeared on the BBC three times, Radio 4, Radio 5, and The Telly.

Speaking about this, he's the sort of unofficial spokesperson

for the automotive industry, isn't he?

Normally speaks a lot of sense.

When you're unavailable, yeah.

Yeah, obviously, John.

I was busy at the Gospel Business Award, so I couldn't actually do it.

He said that he's very worried about it.

He called it an incoherent policy, and quite bizarre was what he said.

It's just these mixed messages that are just going to cause the industry real trouble.

I mean, even the OBR has forecast that this is going to actually result

in a net drop in electric car sales at a time the ZEV mandate is increasing.

We have to say, James, actually, we've had some conflicting information

from the government on this.

We did publish a story saying this will impact.

Putting this tax on will cause EV sales to drop 440,000 or whatever.

But actually, the government would like to add,

I'm giving the government right to reply here because they've replied to us a lot.

They'll say, actually, with their other benefits that they've put in,

which we'll perhaps go into in a moment,

the net benefit is that there'll be 130-something,

160-something thousand more EVs on the roads.

That sounds like utter rubbish, a spokesperson.

I mean, we've got a very angry email from the HM Treasury spokesperson yesterday.

I didn't realise there was such an avid reader of Cardi in a magazine,

but clearly they are because they were very angry in their email wanting a correction.

But this was because, I mean, we didn't incorrectly report it.

The OBR changed their numbers, didn't they, after first publishing them,

probably due to the fact that they're trying to do anything they can

to keep their jobs after publishing the entire budget 45 minutes early on Wednesday.

Shall I move on to some, well, more budget news, but slightly better news,

and I'll get through this quickly, which is, well, OK, I'll do the positive bits of the budget.

So, what's the word?

The luxury car supplement or whatever it's called.

We're at £40,000 and you pay more tax.

That's been jumped up for EVs to £50,000, so that...

Very generous.

Well, the EVs are more expensive, James, aren't they?

We were selling one between £40,000 and £50,000 between now and April.

We've got some of the new MG IM product that's priced between that.

If I was buying one, I'm waiting till April.

Well, exactly, exactly.

And will it, you know, when it was announced at £40,000, you suddenly saw a lot of...

It's like a block, isn't it?

So, you suddenly saw, let's say, Nissan go,

oh, actually, let's bring out an Aria that's got less kit on it,

but it happens to be £39,995.

And, you know, this will sort of undo that good work,

which is not quite so brilliant for consumers.

But anyway, that's one thing that's going on.

The other thing is employee car ownership schemes,

which has not really been in headlines that much,

but this is an enormous generator of used cars, employee car ownership schemes,

and lots of dealers and manufacturers have spoken to us about,

over the last few months, about how worried they are,

that this was going to go away,

and this is, in effect, a way of...

It's a sort of benefit for your employees, hence the name,

where you can get them into a nice new car for six months.

They... It's like a...

Well, it's a non-taxable kind of benefit in a way, isn't it?

But it's an enormous part of getting cars on the roads,

and it was going to be removed,

because Rachel Reeves said it was a sort of unfair benefit,

and there was lots of consternation about this,

because, you know, let's say you're a...

Part of the appeal of working for a car manufacturer

is that you get a reasonable discount on a car, for example,

much in the same way that if you work for a hotel chain,

you get a reasonable discount on hotel rooms,

or work for John Lewis, you get a reasonable discount on going around the shop,

and this was just going to be removed entirely.

This has now been delayed, at least, until April 2030,

which, as you say, James, is the next parliament anyway.

So that has been welcomed as some good news.

Is there any more good bits in the budget chains?

Not really. Shall we move on to something completely different?

Let me move on to something completely different,

because I'd just like to touch on Autotrader

and that deal-builder roll-out

that's still the talking point in the industry.

They used car wars on Monday.

It was the hot topic of conversation.

I did feel, for the Autotrader table,

sat right in the middle of the room.

I saw that they had many people pop over and have a quiet chat with them.

So Deal-Builder, as we've covered quite extensively on this podcast,

has been reasonably controversial,

and this week, news from the IMDA,

the Independent Motor Dealer Association,

claimed that 165 dealers,

according to a survey of their members,

have cancelled their Autotrader contracts,

or downgraded.

You'll remember, when we published those stories,

Autotrader originally said,

because there was this big groundswell of opinion,

this protest day on the Wednesday,

where everybody was going to cancel at exactly the same time.

And what actually happened,

according to Autotrader on that day,

was 59 people cancelled and 70 downgraded,

which is still a lot of dealers.

It's still a lot of lost revenue for them.

But the IMDA were a little bit cheesed off, I think,

at those figures, thinking from what they've heard

in their forums and conversations that it was actually more,

so they carried out this survey

and found that 165 dealers had promised it.

Autotrader disputed those cancellation figures

when we went to them for comment yesterday

and said it was actually,

what they've seen was actually a little bit lower.

So there's a little bit of kind of,

he said, she said situation here

between Autotrader and dealers.

But the reason I picked this story is,

this story is not going away.

The Motor Trader is still not very happy

about Deal Builder.

Everybody I speak to,

and I've reported this back to Autotrader too,

everybody I've spoken to has had a negative

opinion of Deal Builder.

I haven't had one person ring me up

and say how much they like it,

but I've had a lot of people ring me up

and say they don't like it.

And it was the same on Monday.

Everybody wanted to talk about it and nobody was happy.

So this is clearly still something

that is on dealers' minds.

I mean, if there are dealers out there who like it,

I would love to hear from them.

My details are on the website, you can find me on LinkedIn.

Please send me a message with how much you love Deal Builder

because I'd be like to hear the other side of the coin.

But yeah, I'm hearing a lot of negativity about it

and it's not going away.

Sam, I'm pretty sure we talked about it on Monday.

I mean, what's your take on it?

We are on Deal Builder.

I mean, everyone's on Deal Builder now,

but we were amongst the 6,000 or so

that were on the trial of it.

Only once they assured me they weren't going to try

and charge me 0.25% of the transaction or whatever.

Do I like it? No, not really.

Do I see why they've done it?

Yes.

There is the question of whose purpose are they serving?

Is it for their own benefit or is it for the consumer?

I would argue that there is absolutely a need

in the digital landscape, if you like,

for consumers to transact online

and have the ability to go through and do a bit more.

So when we went live in 2020 on a website,

it was a case that if an inquiry comes throughout of hours

and the only option is to call or email,

then that is the end of that journey there and then.

They can't go any further.

So the ability to Deal Builder and to go in

and get an indicative part exchange price

and to then start looking at finance is really powerful.

The problem is that we want that on our website.

I want a consumer to have gone through and chosen a car,

narrowed it down, looked at the description

and then gone, okay, I'm happy with that.

But let me go check out the retailer as well

because I'm not going to reserve a car

from somebody that I have no idea who they are.

An auto trader, the direction of travel

is to take away the brand of their customer,

or is the dealer, and try and make consumers

more comfortable with auto traders.

They've got their consumer research which says

that people are more comfortable with auto trader.

Now, as a retailer that previously won auto trader awards

and tried to do a good job with digital retailing,

what annoys me slightly about this is the fact

that the direction of travel for auto trader

across the last few years appears to be

removing any potential up and down side.

So they're leveling out the playing field.

It gives a really good retailer less opportunity to look

and present their adverts in a way that's different

and can stand out, and admittedly also brings up

the level of the crap, shall we say.

So I can understand what they're doing from their perspective.

I don't think it should be, I think it should be optional.

And I've listened to all the webinars that they've done.

Their point is that it has to be a consistent user journey

for everyone on their site.

I don't agree with that.

I completely agree.

Why does it have to be?

The consumer knows they're not buying a car from auto trader.

They're buying a car from the retailer and they're the marketplace.

So a consumer accepts that different dealers

have different policies and do things slightly differently.

And this idea that it has to be the same journey

is frankly rubbish because they've had 6,000 dealers

trialling it for the last few years.

So there's already been half the dealers with a different experience

and they're always AB testing.

So I don't know, I feel like it's an own goal.

The timing of it was terrible.

Dealers always look at things week on week, not year on year.

So we're always going to, this login element of the,

of needing to get the leads.

Again, I get it.

And if they've got the benefit of these buyer signals,

from a PR perspective, give us the benefit first

before you then hit us with the downside.

So, and I think they've got some learning to take from it.

But I agree.

I don't think it needs to be mandated.

I think let the ones who want to be on it be on it

and let the ones that don't burn.

Yeah, I do.

I mean, positive on the positive front,

I do think the changes they've made to the contact buttons are better.

I still think they could be improved, but they are better.

The fact that it's been removed from reserve or call,

which is obviously useless outside of ours.

So I think it's cool.

And then next steps, isn't it?

And the next steps bring expands that button

and then people can choose to build a deal.

They can choose to reserve it,

but they can also importantly still choose to contact us via email

or any other way that we need them to.

And that has actually improved things.

I do think that is better.

I'm waiting to hear from them what their results of their testing,

because they only changed it middle of last week.

I'd be interested to hear what they think.

And also it'd be interesting to hear what they think.

I mean, have you seen a change in contacts?

Are you getting more email leads now as a result of that change?

I wouldn't say it's been hugely noticeable.

I listened to your chat with Nathan a few weeks ago

and understand that their point was,

well, dealer's always cry out for leads.

He told us he wanted phone calls, not emails.

And it feels like they do listen.

I feel like that was slightly misguided,

because removing that email element,

especially out of ours just made no sense.

But I'm glad to see that they've rolled back on that pretty quickly.

I think it's challenging.

Sam, I was just going to say, what would you say to them?

I mean, what would you like to see them do?

I mean, you've mentioned there you'd like them to make it optional.

I mean, what would you...

Because I just feel that there was a little bit...

This discontent hasn't gone away from the feelings I get.

And I just wonder what would please people in the most straight?

From my perspective,

and I can't speak for all dealers across the country,

but I want to be able to have the personality of my business

come back through.

And these deep links to our own full vehicle description page,

I've spent a lot of time making our full page ad for a used car,

really detailed, really good for a used car buyer.

And auto trader, we pay them a lot of money for their audience,

which is great.

Can't fault their audience whatsoever.

We pay them a lot of money for their data.

Can't fault their data.

But I don't need to pay them to transact for me.

I can transact myself.

And having either either...

I don't mind deal building there for the ones who want to do it,

but it can't come at the expense of the deep link to my own website.

Yeah.

And I think if it's going to work and it's going to be the future

and auto trader can prove that to the motor trade,

then it will naturally progress onto it itself.

You know, you're going to, aren't you?

If dealer down the road is getting more reservations

and selling more cars because they're on deal builder,

you would follow them.

It naturally would follow them.

So, yeah, I mean, I think this story is going to run on and on.

John, do you want to wedge any more in or are we going to call it a day?

I'm going to call it a day, actually, I think, because we're over our time.

Just before we do that, should we just say congratulations then to all of our

winners of the used car awards?

Because there were some cracking winners at that event.

I very much enjoyed it, especially Tom Hartley Jr.

who won the Outstanding Achievement for that.

Bernie Eccleston deal and the Mansour OJ McLaren deal.

And also just a quick note for Snow's group, Steve and Snow,

who won our Lifetime Achievement Award.

Fantastic speech at the end of the night and very, very well deserved.

So, congratulations to all our winners.

Absolutely, absolutely.

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

No, I don't think so. It's been a busy week.

Lots of things in the budget, lots of, yeah.

There's never going to be a shortage of things to talk about this week.

I think you've covered them all pretty well.

I was going to mention the Auto Trader Deal Builder.

I thought you might have done that one to death, but no, I'm glad you did.

No, I think you've covered the vast majority.

Okay, so I'm going to have to ask you,

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

I'm not going to choose a single story.

I'm just going to go for a bit of an uplift for you, James,

because I feel like you're on the wrong end of the stick more often than you're not.

So, generally speaking, James Bagot, well done.

Thank you very much, Sam. That's much appreciated.

And I still haven't checked the scores from last week,

so I will do that at some stage.

But I'd like to think we're level now, John.

Nobody cares, James.

I care, John. I care.

Well, that's something, isn't it?

Oh, well, congratulations to James.

It must be your new-found confidence

from your fireside chat with the local newspaper man.

Oh, it must be, yeah. Stop mentioning it.

Ah, man.

I'm sorry, it's just because it reminds me of the Norfolk Bravery Awards

from Alan Partridge.

It did feel like that.

Did you finish the evening trying to impress a local mustard magnate?

Or flog a tie and blazer set.

Yeah, exactly.

Well, all that's left for me to say is thank you to Sam for joining us today.

It's been great to have you on and chat to you about you and your business

and get your opinions on our stories.

Thank you.

Yeah, nice to see you, Sam. Thank you very much.

Give it all the best to your dad.

I'm sure he'll be listening this afternoon when it goes live.

Ah, good man.

And thank you as well to James for taking time out of his busy schedule

to join us here.

And thank you for listening.

We'll be back next week with another episode.

So make sure you're subscribed,

so you'll be notified when that goes live.

If you want to check out the stories you mentioned today,

take a look in the show notes below

or head to cardinalmagazine.co.uk.

Thanks for listening and goodbye.

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68:07

Pay-per-mile EV tax, Audi and Mercedes dropped from Motability, and IMDA members' thoughts on Deal Builder – with Sam Luscombe, episode 233

MG

EV

Suzuki Jimneys

Dealerway

Kia Picantos

Mitsubishi

Lexus

Volvo

Alfa Romeo

Mercedes-Benz

Polestar

Land Rover

Nissan

Audi A3

aspirational brand

residuals

Bmw 1

Kia Ceed 1.6 GDI

Toyota Corolla

Jensen Interceptor

fuel efficient

PHEV

electric vehicle (EV)

Stellantis

Ford

Nissan Ariya

Tata Motors Aria

About this episode

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