The big news in the motor trade at present is Cazoo’s announcement that it is to stop retailing its own cars and instead become a sales platform for other traders to advertise cars for sale, alongside Auto Trader and eBay/Gumtree Motors. In their own words, Cazoo is going to be “transitioning to a pure play automotive marketplace.”
While it has been no real secret within the industry that Cazoo has been struggling for some time, the announcement of a switch to advertising cars being sold by others was a surprise, especially given that when Cazoo launched in 2019, founder Alex Chesterman made no secret of his view that the existing motor trade was… well let’s just say he was far from complimentary and made clear he thought he could do a lot better.
How quickly this happens remains to be seen – it was suggested that Big Motoring World were looking to buy Cazoo’s stock of 3500 vehicles, though at the time of writing this doesn’t seem to have happened and Cazoo are still listing their own cars for sale on their website, though the actual Cazoo branding seems to have been reduced. Editor Martyn also says he saw a few Cazoo cars going through Eastbourne Car Auctions a couple of weeks ago, though it wasn’t clear whether these were trade-ins, former retail stock or cars acquired by their car-buying side.
Cazoo taff, however, have b
