30 July 2012

Vertu Motors’ statement to its shareholders  about self-registrations certainly put the cat among the pigeons. Within minutes other retail group chief execs had weighed in with their thoughts and the ‘chat’ at last week’s Manheim press briefing was about little else.

Notable silent on the issue are the two trade bodies, SMMT and RMI. Not surprising: after spending most of the first six months of the year bigging-up rising retail sales, they’d look pretty stupid if they now admitted it was the industry doing it for themselves.

There’s nothing new in self-registration or pre-registration or forced registration … or whatever you want to call it (basically getting rid of surplus new cars by registering them to customers that don’t exist and then selling them cheaper as used).

However, Vertu highlighted the fact that these cars are now being registered as retail sales, rather than fleet, and they are sitting on the retailers’ books, rather than the manufacturers.

Does it matter? Certainly I know at least one boss of a cash-rich retail group who loves pre-registered cars. He can buy them in packs from his manufacturer partners, bang them out at a price that suits his customer base and turn a tidy margin on each one – plus a volume bonus.

The problem comes, of course, when the sheer volume of self-registered cars out there starts to destabilise the rest of the market. That’s what Vertu is worried about and it’s also troubling the price guides, Glass’s and CAP.

If you’ve any doubt about the scale of the issue take a look at sytner.co.uk or listers.co.uk and search used cars, by mileage. And those two sites, chosen vaguely at random, prove it’s not just the ‘usual suspects’ who are guilty.

The cars we are seeing now have been registered in the past three months but stock levels are building. If UK National Sales Companies are put under pressure to deliver in September – and the pound-euro exchange rate remains favourable – then the problem is about to get a whole lot worse.

Rupert Saunders

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Tags: Adrian Rushmore, forced registration, Glass's, Pre-registering, Treasure Island, Vertu Motors