Dealer ’s Diary
Peter Simpson provides us with an insight into the automotive sales trading world – and beyond.
► I’ve just bought a new car. No, not a brand-new one – you know me better than that – but a new to me car. Those of you who’ve followed me over the years may not be that surprised to learn that I’ve gone back to Volvos, but this one represents a bit of a departure. As you can see, it’s a Volvo C70 convertible – and I absolutely love it! I’ve actually been following the listings for these since late last year; the original plan was to try and buy one by the end of February to, hopefully, avoid buying an open-topped car in the height of summer. However, for various reasons (including, really frustratingly on one occasion, my now-replaced laptop freezing at a crucial point in online bidding) it’s only just happened.
I’ll tell you more about the actual car in due course, for now I’d like to concentrate on some rather interesting stuff which the purchase, and observation of the market leading up to it seems to have revealed about the current state of the trading business.
Firstly, and most significantly, it does seem to me that the days of everything making sky-high prices are over. Of course, there will always be cars which take off; all it takes is two people to have a buyer waiting or be very keen for some other reason. There will also be periods when particular cars are sought-after. But given that I was buying a convertible car in the middle of a heatwave, and it was an 11-year-old Grade 2 car with complete history, a clean-apart fromone-bulb essentials condition report and from a decent source (Cazoo partexchange), one would expect CAP Clean at least under the hammer.
But no. CAP Clean was actually £5.1k, and I nabbed the car for £4200, so even with BCA’s £400 Buyers Fee on top, and the £11.40 charge for the essential report, it was still comfortably under book. It was also still slightly under after factoring in the £230 delivery charge from BCA Newcastle down to Lincolnshire; in theory a personal collection by train and driving back would have saved about £100, but these days I’m not as keen on making long motorway journeys on unknown cars than in my younger days.
I was also impressed by how quickly the car arrived – this time last year it was taking up to two weeks for cars to be delivered, but for this one a delivery of “up to seven working days” was quoted. I bought the car lunchtime Friday and paid online that afternoon, having also booked the delivery slot online. The following Tuesday, just before noon, I had a call from the transporter driver asking for final directions “as I’m about four miles from you.”
