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Latest Entries
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Up against it
The Castrol Professional Car Servicing & Repair Trend Tracker 2013 is published in June. In the next issue of Auto Retail Bulletin we will produce a summary of some of the findings, meanwhile, here is something that struck us when contemplating the servicing retention for various franchises.
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Big Stuff
We’re often struck by how motoring is affected by changes beyond the control of those in the industry. We call it ‘big stuff’ - things like changes in legislation, tax, the economy and the ageing population.
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Servicing and repairs
The idea of analysing the type of work carried out by age of car was prompted by a recent survey completed by Gocompare. Its survey found 36% of motorists have put off routine servicing to save money and a further 6% have never had their car serviced.
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Big brother in the back seat: How will data drive motorists’ spending?
A news release from Gocompare.com ‘reveals’ that “over 10 million (36%) UK motorists have put off servicing their car to save cash, with over a quarter (27%) of drivers travelling more than 2,000 miles over their car manufacturer's recommended servicing mileage before getting their car serviced.”
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Gender differences
Between 1975 and 2011, the number of people with driving licences in the UK increased by 81% from 19.4 million to 35.2 million. The growth is principally because of a near twofold (171%) increase in women drivers. But just how different are men and women in the way they relate to motor retailing? We look at two recent consumer surveys.
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Shopping around online
We already know that new car registrations were 2.04 million units in 2012, which is an increase of 5.3% compared to 2011. However, it will be a few months before used car sales figures are released for 2012, and it will take even longer to work out how the distribution channels have fared – franchised, independent and private.
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Bodyshops diversify in falling market
With the kind permission of Auto Retail Network, we are pleased to reproduce here an article written by Trend Tracker director Chris Oakham about our report - The Car Body Repair Market in the UK, 2012-2017. The article appeared in the January 2013 edition of The Bulletin.
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Dispatches reveals the secrets of car insurance
Channel 4’s Dispatches programme (Monday 7 January at 8.00 pm) investigated the role of insurers and accident management companies. As noted on C4’s website: “Dispatches reveals the secrets of car insurance that all drivers should know. Harry Wallop investigates claims that major insurers cash in when you have a crash, through maximising profits, lucrative referral fees and rebate deals, sometimes at the expense of doing what's best for you and your car.”
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Car Servicing and Repairs Comparison Sites – the Future is Digital
We’re departing from usual Trend Tracker policy to welcome a guest blogger with some statistical insights into consumers’ habits. Ian Griffiths of Who Can Fix My Car has pioneered online sourcing and supplier comparison in the SMR sector, and urges suppliers to climb on the bandwagon. Meanwhile, he is uncovering patterns of consumer behaviour which complement Trend Tracker’s large-scale Lake Motorists Survey data.
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Independents still going strong
Trend Tracker’s longest-running question in its monthly survey of 1,000 motorists is: “Where did you last get your car serviced?” The latest results available are for January to August and these have been plotted together with the long-term trends in the graph below.
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Knock-on effects
We hear a lot about ‘interconnectivity’ these days. What happens in one part of the world can have a knock-on effect in a completely different part of the world whether it’s a war, financial disaster, famine …. or demand for goods and services.
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The UK car body repair market
Later this month, or in early November, we publish our biennial report on the UK car body repair market. Published since 1994, this report has seldom made happy reading for those in the industry and this year’s is no exception. The car body repair market always seems in a constant state of flux with supply and demand precariously in balance, and a very small cohort of ‘professional’ insurance company customers accounting for the majority of work. Gross margins are consequently low.
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The cost of motoring
Two consumer surveys in August apparently highlighted the increasing cost of motoring. The first by CarLoans4U found 40% of motorists cutting back on car usage and the second, by Green Flag, reported a similar percentage (41%) saying they will reduce the number of journeys they make.
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Independents winning in SMR battle
With the kind permission of Auto Retail Network, we are pleased to reproduce here an article written by Trend Tracker director Chris Oakham about our report - The Castrol Car Servicing & Repair Trend Tracker 2012 Update.
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Used car dealerships fall by a quarter in ten years
With the kind permission of Autotrader.co.uk's Dealer Update magazine, we are pleased to reproduce here an article written by Tony Lewis about our report - The Future of the Used Car Market in Great Britain, 2012 - 2017.
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Motorists keeping their cars longer
The recession that started in 2008 seems never ending. After flat-lining since late 2009, the UK economy slipped back into recession at the end of 2011. With countries around the world in a similar state, it looks like it’s going to be a long haul. Indeed if the eurozone crisis gets worse, the UK will suffer further pain.
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Car buyers aren’t always logical
We’ve always wondered about the logic employed by car buyers. How do they decide to buy one particular new or used car over another?
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Sad passing of Ron Sewell
We were sad to hear of the death of Ron Sewell on 28 May. The current directors of Trend Tracker first met Ron when working for Sewells International in the mid-1980s, and later, both rejoined for a while his publishing business after he had split this from his training company and disposed of the latter.
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Recession hits bodyshops too
While the chart below might suggest we are, once again, delving into the vagaries of the new and used car markets – we are not. No, the subject this month is bodyshops.
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Used car retailer numbers: 25% down and falling
The latest report from Trend Tracker - The Future of the Used Car Market in Great Britain, 2012 to 2017 - confirms that demand for used cars has been depressed since the beginning of the recession in 2008. No more used cars were sold in 2011 – 6.8 million units – than 10 years earlier in 2001. That has not unexpectedly impacted on the number of businesses offering used cars for sale.
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The franchise network outlook
The perilous state of our high street shops is hardly out of the headlines these days with 15% of premises now empty. Even before the recent recession they were under attack from internet sales, supermarket diversification and ‘sheds’ on retail parks.
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Car prices outlook
Because the purchase of new and used cars is consumer spending, it is unsurprising that the Government’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) keeps a close eye on prices as part of its monthly survey of inflation for the Consumer Prices Index.
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Ball Park Figures
A few weeks ago the phone rang and one of our clients asked: “How much was the parts market worth in 2011?” It’s a seemingly simple question and we do keep track of the sales of replacement parts sold to end purchasers in the markets for servicing and mechanical repairs and car body repairs. But for 2011? And then there is the added problem of defining and measuring parts wholesaling.
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Our crystal ball
An important feature of our reports – we are launching three new reports this year - is the forecast section where we look into our crystal ball and project future market trends. In the past, this has proved relatively easy and it was just a matter of plugging key data into a computer model. But the current situation has us scratching our heads.
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Have electric vehicles stalled?
A year ago we published a weighty tome about electric vehicles (EVs) which we assumed at the time would go out of date fairly quickly because of fast-moving technological developments.
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Franchised workshop retention - going the wrong way
With Trend Tracker’s consumer data about car servicing now available up to the end of September 2011, the full impact of the ageing car parc on franchised workshop retention on servicing, maintenance and repair (SMR) is emerging.
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Accessorise! New car accessories research
It goes without saying that sales executives will make at least one attempt to sell accessories to new and used car customers. And as any sales executive knows, the best time to sell accessories is when a customer signs up for a car.
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More evidence for prioritising EV R&D over sales incentives
Our report EVs: Energy, Infrastructure and Mobility in the Real World broke new ground by attempting to measure the gaps between the rhetoric of the pro-EV lobbies and consumers, and between likely future EV capacity and the EV capacity required to make a real dent in oil demand.
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The horse’s mouth
Research is all about bringing together facts to help answer crucial questions. In the case of the auto retail industry, research typically means ‘market research’. It’s about the market background, customers, the supply structure, the market size and trends, and so on.
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Trend Tracker webinar
For the first time, Trend Tracker has used a webinar as a means of informing potential clients interactively about the content, purpose and delivery formats of a new research study - in this case the UK Car Buyer Brand Perceptions 2011 study. Those unable to join the live event on the day (21 September)can still download the presentation and audio discussion - Click here to download the webinar
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Emotive brands need rational benefits
Our research analyst Robert Macnab picks out a highly topical theme from the findings of Trend Tracker’s UK Car Buyer Brand Perceptions 2011 study - the need at a time of apparently interminable crisis in the Western world’s economies for premium car brands to answer buyers’ ‘right brain’ needs for affordable practicality.
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Hot, Thirsty and Crowded: Are the New Vehicle Technologies the Answer?
Dr. John Wormald, noted consultant, co-founder of the advisory firm Autopolis, author of some of the most authoritatively critical books on the car industry and an inspiration to the directors of Trend Tracker since our foundation, examines this critical question in a new free-to-download report, available here:
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MOT test regime change
When analysing the car servicing and repair market drivers, the ‘usual suspects’ include: car parc size and age profile; average car mileages; build quality trends; service intervals and content; new car warranties; labour rates …. with political and legislative factors barely a consideration. However, that could be about to change with the government’s review of the MOT test regime.
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Independents winning more work
First published in Auto Retail Network (July 2011), Toby Procter uses the newly published Castrol Professional Car Service and Repair Trend Tracker 2011 report to reveal for the first time how the independent workshop sector has
increased its grip on car servicing, maintenance and repairs (SMR) since the recession. -
Driving workshop business
A large proportion of the research for the 2011 Castrol Professional Car Service and Repair Trend Tracker report is an extensive survey of motorists. We have run some elements of this consumer survey since 1994, interviewing 1,000 motorists every month.
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Losing your grip on servicing, maintenance and repair
This month we launched the 2011 edition of the Castrol Professional Car Service and Repair Trend Tracker. It has been published in various forms since 1995 based on an array of primary research including a monthly consumer survey of 1,000 motorists.
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With a fair (economic) wind …
At the Auto Retail Network used car profit clinic in Loughborough last month, I presented our preliminary forecasts for used car market volumes up to 2016. To produce a forecast for any of the auto retail markets we create a computer model incorporating the market drivers. Usually our forecasts are quite accurate: for example, our used car market forecast in 2002 was within 6% for 2003 to 2007.
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Tesco finally makes it into the motor trade
For the past 25 years, there have been regular scares in the motor trade concerning the threat of incursion by one of the massive retailers capable, at least in theory, of combining financial clout and money lending capacity with real estate and a liking for the F&I profits associated with car sales. Tesco has been treated as the leading potential contender, if only because of its pre-eminence among UK retailers.
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The cautious used car buyer
Our new report on the used car market will be published later this year. We have started the research which includes a consumer survey of 10,000 motorists - a brand new addition to the used car report we have completed biennially since 1994.
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Been here before? Precedents for EVs and energy upheaval
A new WWF report, ‘Electric avenues: driving home the case for electric vehicles’, calculates that ending the UK’s dependence on fossil fuels means at least 1.7 million electric vehicles on the country’s roads by 2020, and around 6.4 million by 2030.
Obtaining the effect on climate change urged by the WWF also entails decarbonising the power supply these EVs would be using, a task made no easier by the effect of the Japanese nuclear disaster on planning for the replacement of coal fired power stations. -
SMR market down, petrol costs up less than you might think
A reflection on topical news was prompted by the work under way to complete the 2011 edition of the Car Service and Repair Trend Tracker report, of which more anon.
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New thoughts on re-manufacturing?
Recently we had an invitation to visit the China International Remanufacturing Forum to be held in April in Hangzhou, 100 miles southwest of Shanghai. The seminars available over the two-day conference emphasise China’s leading role in automotive parts remanufacturing and include reviews of European market demand for remanufactured parts.
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Modec in administration
On 4 March R K Grant, S J Appell and A C O'Keefe of Zolfo Cooper were appointed joint administrators of Modec Ltd., the Conventry-based electric truck maker whose factory David Cameron MP, then opposition leader, opened in June 2007. Modec has a sizeable number of corporate and municipal fleets among its customers, including Tesco and Fedex.
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EVs by the mile: Renault & Better Place launch in Denmark
Towards the end of this year, Danes will be able to buy a Renault Fluence Z.E. battery-electric family car priced at 205,000 DKK (£23,518.95) including 25% VAT but no registration tax (EVs under 2,000kg are exempt) - and no battery.
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Rising Leaves: Nissan Leaf
News that could take a Leaf or two out of Nissan’s (pre-order) book: Unfairly perhaps, Automotive News this week greeted as “a troubling sign” a £2,000 increase in the UK list price of the Nissan Leaf. Nissan’s own prognosis has been that government sales incentives will be needed only for three years or so from the Leaf’s launch; EV total costs of ownership are projected to become competitive that soon as costs reduce, following the downward price trend of consumer electronics. Most other EV proponents, with lower targets and market penetration forecasts, have been less optimistic.
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Polls apart from reality
One in three motorists would consider buying an electric car in the next 12 months, according to the release on a new survey by Motorpoint issued on 17th February.
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All right on the night?
Before our latest report on electric vehicles (EVs) was released in January, it fell to me to proof read all 282 pages. Although proof reading is a very detailed activity, you don’t lose sight of the big picture and the picture is very ‘big’ for EVs.
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Needed for EVs to save the world: more R&D, less wishful thinking
In December 2010 the UK government’s advisory Committee on Climate Change recommended cutting the UK's GHG emissions by 60% relative to 1990 levels (46% relative to current levels), by 2030. The UK would then require a further 62% GHG emissions reduction from 2030 to meet the 2050 target already legislated for in the UK’s Climate Change Act.
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The Weather Effect
It’s difficult to imagine how research can be affected by the weather, but we experienced two serious delays to our schedule in December. Throughout the month we had appointments to analyse service job cards at independent garages and franchised dealerships – working towards the April 2011 edition of the Car Service & Repair Trend Tracker. Quite simply, snow prevented us from driving to workshops and we have now fallen a month behind.
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Electric vehicles: Are we serious?
In November I visited the inaugural ‘eco2’ transport show at London’s Earls Court, where I found the hall on the third and final day sadly empty of visitors. Soon after our visit to Earls Court, Bosch released its research report ‘Bosch: Driving Green Britain’.
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EVs: The challenges ahead for retailers
Auto Retail Network (www.auto-retail.com) published a feature by Trend Tracker's Toby Procter in the January 2011 issue of Auto Retail Bulletin, on the likely impacts of EVs on franchised dealers charged with selling and fixing them. You can see the article here, with the publisher's kind permission.
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Subsidy junkies or realists?
Daimler CEO Dieter Zetsche was reported by Bloomberg to have said on 11 November at a corporate CSR event in Stuttgart that “Governments should offer consumers financial incentives to buy electric vehicles to help offset the extra cost for manufacturers to build the cars.”
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Only 5% of new car buyers are influenced by green credentials
Research released on 19.11.2010 by Bosch revealed that despite 69% of drivers claiming to do their best for the environment, only 5% of motorists buying a new car would be influenced by a car’s ‘green’ credentials.
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EVs: When to turn off the subsidy tap?
Over the past century the use of cars has evolved to create an emergent organism which has oil in its bloodstream, and the auto industry at its heart, the supply chain, distribution channels and aftermarket as limbs. Its tentacles reach along the roads which control where we go and where and how we live, into the banks that finance the cars, and the governments that tax them and finance the infrastructure they need.
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Could GE help EVs bust out of the green niche?
GE-WHIZ! GE has confirmed that it will buy 25,000 EVs by 2015 for its own fleet and through its Capital Fleet Services business – the biggest-ever single EV order. Could the global elec-tech. and asset finance giant bring profits for EV suppliers within sight?
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Where has all the work gone?
Auto Retail Network ran two aftersales workshops at the beginning of October and it was our job to present the latest information on the state of the market, which in these tough times was not the most upbeat of assessments. Once we had elucidated the problems, the delegates were tasked with finding solutions as they rotated around four workshops facilitated by experts in relevant areas.
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The new normal for motor retail
We’ve had a credit crunch, a recession, a new government and an emergency budget – all in the space of three years. So is that it? Will everything go back to ‘normal’ now? Yes, but probably not the ‘normal’ we experienced before. To use a current buzz-phrase, it will be a ‘New Normal’. Before we describe the ‘New Normal’, let’s dwell for a moment on what has happened.
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Pessimism and optimism
The least fun part of research is the statistics especially the maths required to work out cause and effect. We employ experts to do all this sort of stuff for us who render forth in what seems like a foreign language full of mysterious words and phrases like ‘t-tests’, ‘significance’ and ‘correlation’.
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The remarkable resilience of retailers
At least some of Trend Tracker’s analysts, myself included, have shown a glass-half-empty attitude towards the standard-model new car franchise system, as some of our past white papers have attested. But we have to admit that earlier reports of its impending demise were more than a little premature. The system isn’t bust yet, indeed it survived the 2008 recession rather better than many might have expected.
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Rare earth metals to get rarer faster?
The New York Times reported on Thursday (22.09.10) that the Chinese government had officially denied halting exports of rare earth metals to Japan, in retaliation for the detention of a Chinese trawler skipper in a long-standing territorial dispute. China had already cut export quotas for the cerium, lanthanum, neodymium etc. etc. on which Toyota et al depend for their NiMH batteries, permanent magnet electric motors and much else besides, and has over 90% of the world’s known rare earth metals deposits.
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Forecasting the Future 2009-2015
Essentially the Car Service and Repair Trend Tracker Update 2010 combines three longstanding research reports into one. First, and perhaps best known, is the Service Trend Tracker. Published since 1995, this report is based on extensive consumer surveys. Every month, 1,000 motorists are asked about where they last had their car serviced. The result is ‘servicing retention’ by make of car and provider of servicing – dealers, independents and DIY – a measure we have always found to mirror, very closely, the industry standard ‘service retention’ that includes all types of mechanical work including routine servicing.
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Facts and figures - DfT analysis of MOT Testing
Two invaluable sources of facts and figures for our research reports come from the Department for Transport (DfT) – the snappily-named Transport Statistics Great Britain and Transport Trends. Hardly the most thrilling reads, but crucial to understanding what’s happening in the car market and why.
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And so it begins
Previously we have explained how the number of cars on the road up to four years old has a knock-on effect to the aftersales market. As new car sales fall the so-called 'four-year car parc' diminishes in size and franchised dealerships, which rely on younger cars for servicing business, start to feel the effects. Then as time passes this dearth of cars becomes a problem for independent garages targeting older cars. What is less well understood is that a falling four-year car parc impacts on the market for car body repairs too, because it is generally newer cars that are repaired after an accident.
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Grossing up gross margins
At this time of year, dealer group PLC’s publish their half-year results – informative barometers of the past six months. Also at this time of year private limited companies with financial years ending last December must post their accounts to Companies House.
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Small percentages add up to bigger percentages
We make no apologies for returning to the subject of parts wholesaling again because it appears, judging by our workload, that this sector is seeing a real renaissance in the franchised sector. However our work with several vehicle manufacturers, looking at network performance on their behalf, has highlighted one interesting problem – staff lacking basic knowledge.
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Automotive Mark-ups & Margins
If you buy something for £100, what do you have to sell it for to make a gross profit margin of 33%? The answer is, of course, £150. Certainly every reader of Auto Retail Network’s Bulletin where this article was first published, would have got this simple example of ‘mark-ups and margins’ correct. However, our experience running training courses for sales executives and aftersales personnel is that the mathematical skills of dealer staff are often sadly lacking, and many would come up with £133 as the answer – how would yours fare? Furthermore, our research on gross margins strongly suggests that this lack of knowledge has an impact on profits.
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Testing times
The coalition government is, we hear, to review Britain's MOT test regime, the previous government having decided only two years ago to reject a government commission's proposal to save motorists money by complying only with the EU minimum requirement for a first test after four years, and biennial tests thereafter. It took two years for the no-change decision to be made after a delayed consultation.
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Range Rover Evoque
From time to time, former Trend Tracker analyst and now business academic Dr. Michael Wynn-Williams delivers us his personal view of events and issues in the automotive sector. Happily this week sees Michael letting us air his view of the Evoque, the latest extension to the Land Rover brand portfolio. Whatever road-bound 4x4s in general evoke to you, I hope you’ll enjoy his robust critique of a company that has “thrown off its old mud-plugging ways,” but has nevertheless “slowly become bogged down in its models and brands.”
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Pricing strategies for a declining market
In a month's time, Ford is cutting the RRPs on all its medium and small cars, as it did in April with its large ones. And it has cut dealer margins too, with the stated aim of making “the whole purchase process more transparent and the value of Ford cars more obvious."
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Are new cars overpriced?
Last month in this column, we shared our views on the scrappage scheme and how this had influenced new car sales in the short-term. New car sales volumes are, of course, important in their own right but also exert a crucial influence on the used car market and aftersales. Longer term we believe that new car sales volumes will respond in a similar fashion to the recoveries experienced after previous recessions. One potential obstacle to this recovery is the possibility that new cars have become overpriced - something that What Car? magazine raises in its latest issue.
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Do Quangoids Dream of Electric Cars?
(With apologies to Philip K. Dick.) In July six electric Mitsubishi i-MiEVs will arrive in the North East for trials run by Cenex's Low Carbon Vehicle Procurement Programme at a leasing cost of £137,450 over four years, plus (we guess) around £6.5m for installing 1,300 charging points. The latter approximate figure is included in the last government's 'Plugged in Places' programme, channelled via the regional development agency One North East. In London, 20 Toyota Prius plug-in hybrids on lease will arrive on the fleets of various public bodies in London, courtesy of Toyota and EDF Energy. Similar trials are under way in the Midlands, funded by the Technology Strategy Board and Advantage West Midlands. Correction: funded by all of us.
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Charting The Decline in SMR Work
Download and read our latest aftersales article, published in the June 2010 issue of Auto Retail Networks' Bulletin.
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Black and Blue in the Bayou
Dr Peter Wells of Cardiff Business School's Centre for Automotive Industry Research (co-author of Car Futures - Rethinking the automotive industry beyond the American model”, available from Trend Tracker), speculated recently in Automotiveworld.com's Environment Weekly that BP's fiasco could prove a tipping point in the evolution of a market for electric vehicles. Market and public sentiment can turn bad on a dime, and BP's bonds have dropped to junk status, although with oil at $75 a barrel, BP is still gushing cash flow and can easily afford the $billion+ Gulf clean-up cost, and pay a dividend to its US shareholders.
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More power to your elbow
According to ASE (incorporating Trevor Jones), the average overall labour efficiency of dealers' service departments fell from 83% in 2008 to 80% in 2009. Our own data record a similar fall and you have to go back more than a decade to find service labour efficiencies regularly exceeding 100%. Bodyshops, too, have seen overall labour efficiencies declining over time.
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Wrong-Footed in Recession
Trend Tracker's associate Dr. Michael Wynn-Williams of Greenwich University Business School contributes some incisive thoughts on the state of the global car industry, reflecting at leisure on the variously effective and irrelevant ways that different automotive OEMs at the Geneva Motor Show were responding to the current dearth of demand. His overall impression of the show was that “this is an industry that is in almost complete denial.” See if you agree.
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DIY job card analysis
Analysing job cards is an essential research tool for our reports on the market for servicing and repairs. It is the simplest way of deriving the average values of jobs and revealing the strengths and weaknesses of the two principal market suppliers - franchised and independent. The method, albeit arduous and boring, is relatively straightforward and it's the kind of research any franchised workshop or independent garage can do for themselves.
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Dealer survey is not all doom and gloom
Earlier in the year in this column we discussed the state of franchise networks and our new study of the used car market. As is often the case in these troubled times, the situation changes almost daily as better information comes to light. For once, though, the new information is not all doom and gloom.
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Death and Taxes
The saying “Nothing is certain but death and taxes” has been attributed to various authors including Daniel Defoe and Benjamin Franklin. Almost as inevitable as 'death and taxes' is the way the UK's population is ageing. This evolving age profile will be a key factor in car purchases in the future. And it is not even the distant future that politicians baffle us with when they talk about pension provision. Your customers' needs will be changing quite dramatically within ten years.
The chart is our interpretation of data freely available from the Office of National Statistics and shows the age profile of the UK's population now and in five years. Noticeably the two lines are almost identical in shape reflecting the certainty that people who are around now are quite likely to be here in five years - give or take influences like immigration and emigration. -
Why scrappage incentives are wrong
Former Trend Tracker analyst and now business academic Dr.Michael Wynn-Williams has contributed our latest white paper, Scrappage by Numbers, explaining why importers have been almost alone in benefiting from the taxpayer's investment in resuscitating employment in UK car production. And sad to say, although we like to be right, two reports from the BBC noted by Trend Tracker's Chris Oakham confirm his argument:
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Auto Retail Bulletin on the UK used car market
The October 2009 issue of Auto Retail Bulletin, the business newsletter for senior executives in auto retailing, carried a feature on some of the key findings of our latest 'Future of the Used Car Market in Great Britain to 2014' report. (Click on the heading above to download.) Those of you who are concerned with used car market trends may find it usefully amplifies the information posted in our Reports pages. For more information on the excellent Auto Retail Bulletin - to which Trend Tracker's Chris Oakham contributes a regular column - go to www.auto-retail.com.
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Redundancy is not the only option
There are many ways of executing research projects and our preference is to utilise telephone surveys. We like to go directly to the horse's mouth and obtain our information first hand. In other words we don't guess anything; we use so called 'primary research'. If necessary we will phone up and interview hundreds of people or businesses. However the sample so obtained has to be representative. In the case of franchised dealers, for example, the profile data always include total staff employed and might even include a breakdown of staff employed by department. And thereby hangs a tale.
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Nineteenth Motor Trader Industry Awards 2009
Trend Tracker director, Chris Oakham, was amongst 830 people at the Motor Trader Industry Awards 2009 held at the Grosvenor House Hotel, Park Lane, London yesterday evening, 8 July. The 19th Motor Trader Industry Awards celebrated the achievements of companies and individuals challenging the worst recession in the UK retail motor industry since the early 90s - and succeeding. Trend Tracker would like to add their congratulations to the winners of the 18 categories:
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Cars: choice or necessity?
A weighty tome landed in our office this week: 'The Car in British Society' from the RAC Foundation. It is the latest incarnation of what started out life as 'The Lex Report' latterly becoming 'The RAC Report'. Running to 158 pages, it is impossible to do the 2009 edition justice here, but merely pick out a few uplifting facts for motor retailers.
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New car finance research highlights dearth of credit
Our latest investigation is into car finance, updating a report which we first published in 2004. Since then the whole world has gone pear-shaped and the financing of car purchases has been hit hard in the credit crunch.
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New car sales could take six years to recover
Not since the recession of the early 1990s have so many dealers asked us what will happen over the next few years and what they should do to prosper against all the odds. Well at least some dealers seem to have overcome the initial doom and gloom and are now looking for the upside. But this does not lessen the problems in the new car market and it is here that we must initiate any search for upside strategies.
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Mashing bangers: the UK's revenue-neutral scrappage scheme
When UK dealers taking part in the scrappage incentive scheme invoice for new cars exchanged for scrapped clunkers, they will find that the £2,000 allowance is VAT-inclusive. Manufacturers passing on the £1,000 allowance they receive from the Government can reduce their input tax on the sale of the new car by £130, leaving a net contribution of £870 from the taxpayer, based on the current temporarily discounted 15% tax rate.
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Why the decline in auto retail finance?
Auto Retail Bulletin's May 2009 issue carries a feature on Trend Tracker's 2009 UK Retail Car Finance market study, explaining how the global financial crisis has interacted with new and used car demand and hit direct lending even harder than point-of-sale vehicle finance.
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Brand new from Trend Tracker - The UK Retail Car Finance Market 2009 report
Does your business have any exposure to the UK retail car finance market? If it does, you won't need to be told that it has done neither lenders nor borrowers any favours in the past year. But in our 2009 update of the UK retail car finance market study we offer something much more useful.
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Buy single sets of results from the rts Auto Retail Industry Salary Survey 2009
You can now buy single pages from the rts Auto Retail Industry Salary Survey 2009 reporting basic and total pay for individual jobs for £15 + VAT each. Available as an instant PDF download, in most cases the information comes complete with the job description as well as salary information by region and nationally. Download the free sample for a car valeter now!
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New Trend Tracker research on automotive sales training
The December '08 issue of the excellent Auto Retail Bulletin newsletter (see www.auto-retail.com if you haven't seen it before) has a summary of a pilot survey carried out by Trend Tracker this year - the first ever independent survey of UK franchised auto retailers' satisfaction with the short sales training courses offered by carmakers.
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New data on the German aftermarket from Trend Tracker partner
Later this autumn Trend Tracker expects to be able to offer UK customers an unrivalled new report on the European aftermarket, published by our German colleagues at Wolk & Partner following a very extensive research programme. As soon as we have more information, we'll let you know full details.
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Pre-publication offer on The Castrol Professional Car Service & Repair Trend Tracker 2008
The latest addition on our Reports page offers advance information on The Castrol Professional Car Service & Repair Trend Tracker 2008 report. Due for publication in October, this report can now be ordered at an 'earlybird' saving of £225 off the published price of £1,250 plus VAT. While we're grateful for Castrol's sponsorship which continues a long association with Trend Tracker, this latest report represents a major development of an established series. To see why we feel justified in believing this report will be THE definitive UK automotive aftersales market study, go to the Reports page on this site
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Tips on car paint care
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Dealers: Bet the farm on used cars
In 2006 when we published our used car report, we took the view that disposable income would fall over the ensuing five years to 2011. And while the basis of our reasoning - tighter monetary policy - now appears almost irrelevant in the light of recent events, the reduction in disposable income has surely come to pass and is likely to get worse before getting better.
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Comment on EU block exemption review and service regulation
An initial reaction to the current state of play in the run-up to the revision or abolition of the automotive block exemption: I'm inclined to agree with the European Commission's desire to simplify things, having found some of the 2002 Regulation's clauses irrelevant. It's clear that the 2002 block exemption gave vehicle manufacturers an opportunity to tear up old contracts and write new, sometimes more onerous ones. Also, that it has facilitated none of the retailing innovation or cross-border investment by dealers that the EC hoped for.
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Don't put all your eggs in one basket
Whether 2008 will see a downturn in the UK economy is hard to say, but the media is doing a brilliant job of talking up a recession. With 30% of motor trade employees under 30 years old, and a further 50% between 30 and 50 years old, there are probably not too many in the business old enough to remember the last severe recession in the early 90's. The lessons learned back then are surely applicable today - don't put all your eggs in one basket and act quickly to cut back overheads at the first sign of trouble.
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The law of unintended consequences
'The Law of Unintended Consequences' says that for every action we take to achieve a particular result there will always be another fall-out result that we did not intend. It might well be that the Chancellor's latest budget could have unintended consequences for the new and used car markets and the future shape of the car parc.
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Welcome to the new Trend Tracker site
With the 2008 re-launch of www.trendtracker.co.uk to fully automate our online reporting shopping facility, Trend Tracker has also launched into the blogosphere, with a mission to alert our customers and associates of any new facts, figures or issues we believe can usefully inform readers' thinking and business planning. To live up to this mission, we will contribute new content to these pages whenever we have good reason to, rather than daily or weekly.
