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Blog Entries about "car finance"
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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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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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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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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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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.