7:20 am, August 3, 2026
AI is rapidly changing the way car dealers are running their businesses – and all this week the Car Dealer team and I will be showcasing how.
With the help of car dealers and suppliers, Car Dealer AI Week will tell the story of how artificial intelligence is helping in showrooms up and down the UK.
From car buying solutions to battling customer complaints, dealers are already putting AI to work across their businesses.
In a series of articles – and a special two-part podcast series – Car Dealer will be telling their story and inspiring you to take that important first step.
Every day, suppliers using AI in their businesses will tell you what they’ve learned and what they’re seeing car dealers do with the technology.
And I’ve been chatting to them and dealers for a two-part special podcast – The AI Revolution: Will it change the motor trade forever? – to hear first hand about their innovations.
Part one of that podcast is published today on YouTube (above) and all good podcast platforms including Spotify and Apple Podcasts, then on Wednesday, part two will be released.
The most impressive thing I learned from my chats was the amount of dealers who have invested time and energy into building solutions for their showrooms using Claude.
I chatted to George Manning and Steven Douglas, both independent car dealers, who told me how they had built clever systems using Claude.
Manning, who runs car supermarket Hilton Garage, explained how he’d built a car buying app that searches Motorway and Carwow auctions, giving him hit lists to buy.
His AI assistant, built entirely himself without any coding help, lets him text the system to ask about cars he has in stock – he can find out margins, service history, details of where he bought it and much more.
Douglas, who runs car dealer Really Easy Car Credit, has a similar system. His Claude-built app helps him shortlist cars and gives him a hit list to bid on every day. It even looks at his DMS to work out what he has sold lately, check what previous prep costs have been on similar models, and gives him amounts to bid accordingly.
He told me it has given him two to three hours back a day.
And during my chats I covered that contentious topic that many people fear: Will AI take our job?
Well, most of the people I chatted to said they didn’t think that would happen. Yes, it would radically shape up parts of our businesses but there would always be a place for car dealers.
While some predicted AI would soon replace some admin tasks, they all predicted that human management would still be important.
Tom Leathes, Motorway boss, told me: ‘With most revolutions – the internet, mobiles, the telephone – people were worried it would replace jobs. But we’ve actually seen it create them. I think AI will be similar. Jobs will just change.’
I hope this week serves as a source of inspiration for those of you who are yet to dabble in AI just yet. Even if that’s just having an initial chat with AI about something you want it to help you solve or build in your dealership.
I’ve done it myself for the Clever Car Collection and it’s scary how good it is at solving problems. Think for a moment about the tasks you hate doing and then go and ask AI – Claude in particular – whether it can assist. You’ll be amazed at what it can achieve.
My thanks must go to the dealers who gave up their time to chat to me for AI Week and to the suppliers who have supported it including Motorway, Autotrader, Dealerkit, Autoconverse and Impel.
AI Week runs from August 3-7 and we’ll be publishing a series of features and podcasts throughout the week so keep an eye on our website, your podcast feeds and YouTube.