Last chance to get your XC90 orders in for current discount, and last chance to get Ford orders in for current deals too....it’s now or never!
Everything else will now have to wait until mfr’s reveal their cards on price from 1st April (apart from VW, Merc’ and Toyota which are already released and online).

Had great news last night about a MAJOR sponsor joining the www.twyclebritain.co.uk campaign for CLICK Sargent childrens cancer care - but got to keep schtum for now!

29th March 2010 : The end of an era, well ok - a quarter!

2 days to go to the end of the first trading quarter, VW, Merc’ and Toyota have already issued their pricing and deals for Apr-Jun, so we’ve updated our webpages for those brands and models  - but we await news on other brands - we already know Renault will be putting in an increase from 1st April but details are awaited, and it is most likely there will be tweaks on Ford, Vauxhall, Seat, Peugeot, Mazda, LandRover, Citroen and Volvo.

Scrappage has gone, as has all its brand-specific siblings like swappage! Customers who usually change cars at 3-4 years can now get back in the ring!

Ordering is busy today on Audi, Volvo, Ford and VW, with lots of interest on Mazda too. leadtimes on some are scary: July/August on some VW Tiguans, same on Audi Q5....

Today is a good day..apart from trying to wade through differing policy between DVLA offices on accepting online driveaway insurances from some of the big insurance names - it would make life easier for traders if DVLA offices stuck to one policy and made it clear. In the past 6hrs we’ve had 4 different answers to the same question depending on where you call!

Right..we have orders to push through for the end of the day so must dasheroony!

18th March 2010: Turning over a new Leaf

Nissan have announced the new electric ‘Leaf’, running on lithium-ion batteries -will be built in Sunderland - fantastic news for the UK car industry but it is a few years away yet...production starts in 2013, and Ford are getting investment help to develop engines- more great news to safeguard almost 3000 UK jobs (about one quarter of Ford’s worldwide engines are produced in the UK, along with around half of its diesel engines)>
It has been predicted that electric cars will account for around 10% of the global market within 10 years, although the reality and practicality of this remains to be seen in terms of a support infrastructure - we’ll be watching this with interest.

We have been phenomenally busy so far this week, even having to rope in an ex- staff member to help on the phones once already this week, and they were kind enough to come in and help! Lots of people are chasing end of March stock deals, the best remain on Ford due to their exceptionally generous finance schemes - with over 90% of Ford buyers we’ve seen taking the finance scheme up too to get the extra discounts. Other best sellers for the last 3 days have been Audi A3, Mazda 2, Mazda 6, VW Golf and Polo, and Citroen DS3.

Our new Member’s Club has seen 87% of buyers join up to get the member’s discounts, you know it makes sense!

We are hoping to get ordering and pricing news on Volvo XC60/XC90 today for the new 2011 model year cars...watch this space! It’s been a long time coming! Ford have still not opened ordering for 2010 SMax or Galaxy...we have queues of customers waiting to order those.

Will report back later..got to make a start on the overnight orders!
 

An absolutely smashing start to the week, a real run on new car orders flying in today. Unusual coming up to a chancellor’s budget, so we think the public just want to get their new cars en route ready for the summer regardless of what happens on 24th March.

The increase in interest back on larger vehicles continues, perhaps the many who moved to a small hatch in the past 1-2 yrs have realised taking holidays can be tricky in them (!) and many are returning to something more spacious with the features they really want. Best sellers today have been Audi Q5’s (despite new leadtimes of Aug/Sep!), Ford Fiesta stock vehicles, Peug 3008’s, Ford SMax, Renault people carriers (mixed models), LandRover Freelander’s, and Merc E Class.

A lot of people today on the phones haven’t seemed to understand that we are merely advertising deals for normal main dealerships, you don’t buy from us or ‘on the internet’, we simply use a website to show you the prices dealerships are offering, and if you want to order anything we put the dealer in touch with you - it really IS that simple! No mysteries at all!

Small rants from our MD today: Why don’t post offices have stamp machines any more?! Queuing to just buy stamps and assistants too busy trying to sell insurance and anything else unconnected with stamps!..so try WH Smith instead... why do WHSmith shops slow the queue down to try and sell you surplus chocolate when you’re trying to pay for stamps? We don’t want chocolate! (well, we do, but it wouldn’t do us any good on scale Smith’s are trying to shift it on..and I really am in a hurry for these stamps!)

14th March 2010: Helping us help others:

12th March 2010: Cash where it SHOULD be

Ever thought why motoring sites bother to display ‘best deals’ from a variety of brokers/dealers etc? Well..its for cash. Their websites are funded by taking payment from featured companies. They display deals from companies who will pay a sum per month to have their deals included. We had approaches from well known sites asking for a minimum commitment of £1k a month and similar in order to be ‘recommended’ or to have our pricing displayed among other advertisers. A national paper offered us editorial at £120 per column centimetre in return for writing about us! (we said no!).

We used to feature on a number of these well known sites, but as of today we’ve now finished with the final one. We no longer divert cash into other peoples’ comparison sites, all of the money goes where it should, into the deals to the customer. So if you find our deals recommended anywhere, we won’t have paid for it - it will be a genuine recommendation from a journalist who rates us highly. To give you an idea, to participate in the main 5 online car price ‘recommenders’ would cost us a total over £48k pa!! That is lost discount to you.

We’ve followed a well known insurer who also refuses to pay to be on comparison sites, come to us direct and you won’t find some of the available car discount on your vehicle paying for our inclusion on some well known alternative websites!

One other thing you do want to watch out for..there are websites out there offering to take your requirements and get the best quote they can for you from a variety of sources..well here’s something you may not realise, they often sell a brand exclusively to one supplier..so that single supplier gets all the enquiries for the brand of car you’ve requested ‘best deal’ on..so you’ll only ever get a response from one company and of course, who can say they are the cheapest for you - they’ve merely paid for exclusive access to your enquiry lead. And no, we don’t get involved in that nonsense either!

We have stayed true to our word, we remain independent, we don’t buy leads or mailing lists (nor do we sell them, and you’d be surprised how many major names regularly sell their mailing lists). We just want to do what we always set out to do, give the customer a good honest deal direct from a franchised dealer with no strings, and no mysteriously missing logbooks, and no whitewash!
 

11th March 2010: Tweeting your way to a deal