7:41 am, July 10, 2025
Car Dealer Magazine has launched a rigorous real world test of motoring products and services to give dealers an insight into the very best.
As the only motor trader publication able to test products in a live environment at its own used car dealership, the Car Dealer Recommends programme aims to give independent advice on what’s hot and what’s not.
Products and services will be subjected to live testing for a period of a year with reviews taking place a minimum of three months after they went live at the Clever Car Collection dealership.
Tests rank the products in eight categories to give them an overall score out of 100 – only those that achieve more than 90% get a coveted Car Dealer Recommends badge of honour.
Editor-in-chief James Baggott said: ‘When we launched the Clever Car Collection we planned to showcase how AI can help across a dealership but we quickly found that we were also getting unique insight into the suppliers to the motor trade too.
‘We’ve been using a huge variety of them across the business and have first hand insight into what works for a dealership of our size and why other dealers might love them too.
‘We’ve decided to launch these detailed reviews to give other dealers a guide to great products.’
The first product to be subjected to our testing is dealer management software system DealerKit. The software is the first to achieve Car Dealer Recommends status scoring an impressive 97/100.
You can read the full test of the software here.
The Car Dealer Recommends test ranks products in the following categories:
- Concept & Innovation
- Ease of Use & Integration
- Performance & Results
- Pros & Cons
- Marketing & Presentation
- Support & Training
- Value for Money
- Would We Recommend It?
Baggott added: ‘I’m delighted to see DealerKit win the first Car Dealer Recommends badge of honour. It’s a superb product and one that really has helped change our used car dealership for the better.
‘I’m very much looking forward to testing more great products and giving dealers our opinion on them. I love sharing things that have helped make our business better.’
Any motor trade suppliers that wish to take part in this testing programme can submit a request to the Car Dealer team via [email protected].
