19 June 2018

Mitsubishi has opened its first direct sales store in the Lakeside shopping centre in Essex. The store is the first of 12 mall-based outlets planned for cities across the UK. The Lakeside business has been set up by Rockar, but is owned and operated by Mitsubishi and follows the Rockar non-commission sales staff approach.

“This is the first for us and we’ll see how it goes. If this doesn’t work we’ll go back to the drawing board, but if it goes to plan and Rockar smashes it then we’ll roll out 11 or 12 in total across the UK,” said a Mitsubishi spokesman.

The store, which will only sell new cars and not used or servicing, will link in with Mitsubishi’s online sales operation which launched last year and was also set up by Rockar.

The Lakeside store marks a return to manufacturer-owned retail operations for the Japanese brand after it sold the Colt Car Retail Group to VT Holdings in 2012. While VT bought the eight franchise group in 2012, it then handed back the franchise in 2016 for five sites including the dealership nearest to the brand’’s UK HQ in Cirencester.

Tags: Colt Car Retail, Mitsubishi, Rockar, VT Holdings