Sticking it out

Who’d be a car dealer now? With new sales 20 per cent down and dropping, manufacturers moving to four-day weeks, dealerships closing and the used-car market awash with unsold vehicles, they must feel like turkeys being sized up for Christmas. And that’s before anyone has felt next year’s swingeing road-tax increases on post-2001 mid-sized vehicles and upwards.

Mark-ups are surprisingly thin — even in the good times there were few real goldmines among main dealerships. A friend who owns a chain calculated that he’d make more and have a far easier life if he sold all his sites for building and invested the money. But that was last year. Who’d buy them now and where would he put the money? Anyway, he likes his cars, his company, his people — they’re what he does. He has to stick it out and somehow keep smiling, which takes courage. Survival is success.

It’s not all gloom. Workshops are doing better than their sales colleagues because cars still break down and need MOTs and servicing. Even though owners are currently inclined to extend service intervals, those with cars under warranty tend to stick to them and some who would have traded in for a new one just hang on to the old one and have it serviced. Also, there are pockets of economic resistance. For all the City carnage, there are many with cash because they’ve taken it out of stocks and shares and are pouring some of it into the top end of the classic car market — Coys had a very successful sale just days after the Lehman collapse.

Among the top-end golden oldies, beauty, rarity and pedigree ownership mean that some prices move only upwards, because otherwise owners don’t sell.