Full Throttle Freedom

Are we seeing a shift in car dealer vehicle acquisitions when buying from members of the public?

I think we have been seeing this shift for a while now, but yesterday really highlighted this for me.

I sourced this lovely Alfa Romeo through Autotrader on Wednesday afternoon. After speaking with the customer, verifying all the details to enable us to buy this lovely car, we agreed a price after a little back and forth.

We agreed to collect the car within 24 hours and yesterday we arrived with a view to buy. After our inspection and test drive, we checked through all the paperwork and we confirmed we wanted to buy the car! All plain sailing so far…

The paper work for this car was immense! We had the V5c document, all the MOT certificates, full service history, infact I think it had been over serviced, and we also had invoices for endless work that had been carried out on the vehicle. The invoices included gearbox services, aircon re-gas, brake discs and pads twice, new battery, new radiator, cambelt change at the right time, spark plugs replaced, auxiliary belt and tensioner! As far as looking after the car, it would be hard to find one that has been looked after better than this.

The downside however, is that there was some imperfections with the car that we weren’t aware of, such as paint, and it was matte paint too, it needed a couple of tyres and there were a couple of other bits that worked out around £500 to get the car into the sort of condition to sell to a retail customer.

I wanted to buy this car!

The owner of the vehicle was called Julian, and he was a lovely guy and great to deal with. We explained everything to him, to which he agreed to the highlighted points, and we made a revised offer to buy the car.

This was met with “I agree with what you’ve pointed out, but i’m not moving on price”.

Now I’ve been doing this for a long time, and it is at this point that made me think how much the dynamic has changed in these situations. Gone are the days where if you’re selling your car you can either sell it on Autotrader and go through the hassle of timewasters and people coming to your home, OR you have a small number of companies that you can count on one hand like We Buy Any Car, where you can go for a quick sale. Searching on the internet ‘where to sell your car’ yielded zero results.

Now, if you’re selling your car you have endless options. The internet is FULL of information and resources on how to sell your car, there are endless car buying companies that will make offers on your vehicle, there are platforms such as Motorway where you can list your car for sale that will be seen by thousands of dealers, and lastly, if you have gone down the route of selling through Autotrader, this will also attract immense interest from dealers and group buyers who are sourcing cars differently now.

So, here we are!

We have made the trip to Richmond. We have a car Infront of us that we would like to buy. We have given strong money to buy this car initially based on the information we had. There is immense amounts of paperwork to show the car has been well maintained. There is circa £500 worth of cosmetic preparation that we need to do to sell the car, and the price is the price.

WE BUY THE CAR!

That’s right, we buy the car at the price we offered originally.

This way of buying stock for me, is still the best way and if we have to pay strong money for cars that are hard to source currently then so be it.

We get to find cars that meet our criteria, we get to inspect them, test drive them and then part with our money at a point that we are happy to do so.

This beats buying cars from auction and from platforms like Motorway hands down.

After speaking with Julian and completing the deal, we discovered that he had some private interest from the advert on Autotrader so he ‘potentially’ could get a little more if he explored that, he had multiple other offers from dealers, and he also had a dealer that wanted to buy it through Motorway. If I was in Julian’s position I would have done exactly the same and stood firm on his price. I mean, he did get it in the end.

In summary, i’m glad the market has changed like it has! Yes, the margins may have been a lot bigger in the good old days, but I think it’s refreshing that customers can get a fair price for their car and not feel like they have ‘had their pants down’! We will still make good retail margin in this car, even after the work has been done, and the customer has walked away with a price he was happy with.

Thank you Julian, it’s been a pleasure!

What are your thoughts on buying from customers and the dynamic change?

I’m sure from a selfish point of view, you’d love to be the only offer they’re considering, but it does feel better when you buy a great car and offer a great service to match, it feels like a bigger win in my eyes!

I’d love to hear your thoughts, just reply to this email…