12:24 am, March 19, 2011
HAS the Autoquake administration just made Tesco’s rumoured move into car retailing even easier? Quite possibly.
The excellent online used car sales site is now up for sale. Lock, stock and click-to-add-to-basket barrel.
The website – which received a staggering 5.5m visits last year – called in the administrators yesterday after another round of fundraising was unsuccessful.
Administrators are already advertising the sale of the used car set-up, including the domain and the behind-the-scenes web set up, and that would make a tempting purchase for Tesco.
The supermarket has denied it is considering an entry into used car retailing, but we’ve heard the rumours from several sources now that’s probably not the case.
More than one source has told us Tesco has been considering a tie-up with similar online used car retailer Carsite.co.uk and there have been noises from the world of finance that Tesco has been sniffing around for help with car finance packages too.
By purchasing the Autoquake business the supermarket would be already set up and ready to sell cars online – as we believe it had planned to do – in a matter of weeks.
But industry experts have pointed out that perhaps the collapse of this well-known and well-visited online car sales business might serve as a wake-up call to Tesco that selling cars might not be as easy as it looks…
We’ll certainly be watching developments closely.
