10 February 2019

• JLR TO LAUNCH ONLINE SALES IN JUNE
• RETAILERS URGED TO JOIN TAX CONSULTATION
• VW LCV RETAILERS TAKE TO EV PLAN
• RTS GROUP APPOINTS NEW CEO
• AUTO TRADER BACKS 30 BY 30 EQUALITY CAMPAIGN
• HARWOODS COMPLETES OMBUDSMAN MEMBERSHIP
• WORLD NEWS – JLR faces credit rating downgrade
• STOCKWATCH – steady week for motor shares
• COMING UP – Auto Retail Live, driving Facebook
• LAUNCH DIARY – Audi e-tron
• MONEY MATTERS – digital tax return made easy
• OUR BLOG – retailers should capitalise on 2016 legacy

JLR to launch online sales in June

Jaguar Land Rover will have a full online sales operation running by the middle of 2019, according to managing director Rawdon Glover.

Speaking exclusively to Auto Retail Agenda, Mr Glover said the system had been developed in-house and was not running off the Rockar online sales platform.

“We think we will be there in June. We will have the ability to say… ‘I can put a deposit on a car. I can complete all of my finance applications.’

“And if you want to have it delivered to home, you can have it delivered to home.”

“For me, there’s about 24 different bits to the customer journey depending on how you measure it. Already we’ve got 19 of those that are digital. We think it’s about offering the customer whatever blend of that journey they want. So if I want to do it all physically, fine, we’ll do it all physically. We’ll embrace that, and we’ll take you through that. If you want to do it all digitally, then actually, we’re building the capability to do that for you, as well.”

Mr Glover was keen to point out that online sales would still go through the retail network and would not be direct, or agency, sales.

* The full interview with Rawdon Glover will be in the March issue of Auto Retail Bulletin.

Retailers urged to join tax consultation

Retailers have a week to add their voices to a Government vehicle tax consultation closing next Sunday amid concerns HMRC isn’t getting enough response from the industry to convince it to adjust VED and company car tax bands to account for higher WLTP emissions figures expected to rise by at least 10-20% when they are introduced for CO2-based taxes from April 2020.

The British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association is spearheading an industry-wide campaign to encourage as many responses as possible, focusing on the environmental and economic issues around CO2-based taxation, and the impact of pushing consumers and fleets into older and less environmentally friendly cars.

The BVRLA has put together an action sheet. Click here.

For the consultation document click here.

VW van retailers take to EV plan

Volkswagen Commercial Vehicle retailers have welcomed the arrival of the first electric vans due this year with more signing up and ready to invest than expected.

David Hanna, head of fleet, said 48 of the 71 van centres have signed as EV dealers: “Based on the interest at the CV Show when we showed Crafter last year, we threw it out and said ‘this is the investment you need, this is the training you need and anyone can be an EV dealer. With this 48, we have covered far more of the country than we originally planned. If you look at the car brands they have tended to have, even with bigger volumes, somewhere between 10 and 30 dealers at launch.”

Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles is also planning more tailored service plans.

Trevor Hodgson-Phillips, VW commercial vehicles’ head of service and parts, said: “With the California we know that customers have a longer ownership period. We will look to offer longer service and maintenance plans to reflect the difference rather than the traditional three-year service and maintenance.”

Mark Smith appointed CEO at RTS Group

Mark Smith has been appointed chief executive at learning and development agency RTS Group which works with car manufacturers and retailers.  As well as delivering learning and development and automotive events, it has a finance arm – FIMTRAC – which focuses on trade cycle management and helping dealerships increase the uptake of vehicle finance among customers. Marking its 30th anniversary during 2019, RTS Group was named in last year’s Sunday Times 100 Best Small Companies to work for.

Auto Trader backs 30 by 30 equality campaign

Auto Trader has joined retailers Vertu and Jardine alongside Toyota and VW in sponsoring the ‘30 by 30’ campaign aiming to having 30% of top executive positions in the industry filled by women by 2030.

It is backing the UK Automotive 30% Club and its support will help the group launch a new website next month on International Women’s Day, March 8.

Harwoods completes Motor Ombudsman membership

Harwoods Group’s 14 premium car sales and repair centres in the south east have been accredited to The Motor Ombudsman’s Motor Industry Codes of Practice joining the four (three Audi and one Land Rover) which signed in 2016.

WORLD NEWS

JLR faces credit rating downgrade

JLR’s credit status is under review and could be downgraded by leading agency Fitch Ratings. It said: “The group has a significant trade imbalance and production bias to the UK and could be significantly affected by trade barriers and various logistic issues.”

This week JLR posted a £3.4 billion quarterly loss after a big write-down in the value of its cars and plants.

https://bit.ly/2UMsVs3

Manufacturers look at leaving city car sector

Car makers are likely to follow the lead of Opel/Vauxhall which will stop building its Adam and Viva this year and axe their smallest models in the next five years as rising costs squeeze profit margins.

https://bit.ly/2RP0FmH

STOCKWATCH

Closing prices at 8 February and weekly movement

BCA 201.5p (-0.5p)

Cambria 62.0p (+1.0p)

Caffyns 375.0p (n/c)

Inchcape 575.0p (-7.5p)

Lookers 105.0p (-2.2p)

Marshall Motor Holdings 162.0p (n/c)

Motorpoint 200.0p (+2.0p)

Pendragon 25.0p (-1.0p)

Vertu 38.6p (-1.3p)

COMING UP

February 26. Auto Retail Live Profit Briefing: How to drive more sales using Facebook. Practical tips and advice on Facebook and Instagram advertising. More details here.

LAUNCH DIARY

Audi e-tron SUV. From £71,490 excl. £3,500 PICG. Deliveries from April

Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV van. From £25,113 after Plug-In Grant.

Mercedes-AMG GT Coupe. Refreshed supercar for May delivery. From £104,130.

April: Audi TT RS. Prices tbc.

MONEY MATTERS

Digital tax return made easy

Smaller businesses can subscribe to a Cloud-based software system such as Xero, Quickbooks and Sage to comply with the new digital tax laws from around £10 a month. From April businesses above the £85,000 VAT threshold must keep digital records of all their transactions and file VAT returns using commercial accounting software.

https://bit.ly/2Dij9Hc

OUR BLOG

Retailers should capitalise on 2016 legacy

2016 was a record for new car registrations with 2,692,786 getting their first owner and with the bulk of these on three year cycles it means a lot of people now need to do something about it. That opens the door for retailers to get repeat business and while not everyone will want to roll over into a new deal at the very least there must be some conversations had and decisions made.

It was partly why David Smyth, director of family-run Swansway Group, was absolutely on the money when he said during this week’s (excellent, by the way) Auto Retail Network Live Q1 Briefing that the 20+ dealerships in his group are still busy; a lot of people are buying cars because a lot of people need to buy cars, he said.

The motor trade always talks itself up but the three speakers, David, Catherine Faiers, operations director, Auto Trader and Daniel Gregorious, head of sales and marketing at MG Motor UK all sounded buoyant. An online survey done during the broadcast backed that up with almost half the respondents expecting to sell more this year, more than a third expecting to tread water and remain broadly the same as 2018 and the rest predicting a fall. Given the national political and economic headlines that seems like a good outcome if it turns out to be true.

David was positive as was Catherine and Daniel – well, Daniel just smiled every time he opened his mouth but the way MG’s business seems to be going at the moment he would, wouldn’t he!

But with the positivity came the warning that while the 2016 legacy provides a good opportunity, retailers really need to grasp it and drive the leads contained in their databases.

It seems incredible to me that with three year PCPs coming to the end of their term some finance and sales teams are not getting together to discuss who and how to approach returnees but anecdotal talk from one DMS supplier tells me otherwise. It seems scarcely believable that aftersales departments are not gearing up because next month more than 518,000 cars will be needing their first MOT but again, that’s what I heard this week from another source in a position to know.

Of all the comments spoken in our briefing, one stood out and it was Catherine who said that retailers need to maintain regular contact with customers because the buying process can be quite a long journey these days, given the complexity of the cars and choices available.

What better opportunity is there for retailers to start that contact than the need to discuss the ending of the finance term taken out three years ago and an MOT reminder. So why do those well placed to know say some of them still aren’t.

John Swift

Tags: CDK, Harwoods, JLR, Motor Ombudsman, online sales, VW Commercial Vehicles