11:58 am, December 9, 2025
Online marketplace Carwow is hoping to benefit from dealer discontent at Auto Trader, as retailers look to ‘distribute money across more partners’.
That is according to CEO John Veichmanis, who has pledged to improve Carwow’s used car proposition over the coming weeks and months.
Appearing on the Car Dealer Podcast Veichmanis admitted that Carwow’s used car product is in its early stages but said that the early signs are positive.
And with dealers continuing to revolt about the impact of Auto Trader’s Deal Builder, he said that 2026 could prove a significant year for Carwow.
He said: ‘I think there’s a lot of interest in diversifying where dealers spend the marketing money to generate leads. I think there’s unquestionably a lot more interest in trying to distribute that money across more partners.
‘I desperately want to get to a place now where we can provide a huge increase in actual volume in terms of eyeballs and inquiries on the used side.
‘We are in a position where we have a generation one used car product, and we are busily trying to make that generation two and then generation three, given there is just so much demand from dealers.
‘We have a lot of traffic, but we need to make the product much better, and that’s what we’ve been focusing on.’
Despite the recent protests, Auto Trader remains the undisputed number one when it comes to automotive marketplaces.
While Veichmanis does not question the firm’s dominance, he believes the number two spot in the market is firmly up for grabs.
He told hosts James Baggott and Jon Reay that Carwow’s impressive traffic is what makes it stand out from a crowded field, which also includes the likes of Motors, Cazoo and CarGurus.
‘Where we are the undisputed number two is on traffic – on eyeballs,’ he explained. ‘That is where there is a significant delta between us and everybody else.
‘My pitch to dealers is we have a lot of eyeballs, and they’re very, very relevant eyeballs. These are people that are looking to either buy a car or sell their old car and a large proportion of those people that are selling the old one obviously want to buy a new one.
‘That, in many cases, is used – it’s new to them rather than a brand new car.
‘I suppose if you look at many marketplaces, often they go out and raise money from venture capitalists. That is often to fuel customer acquisition, to acquire more people to use the platform – in the case of an auto marketplace, it can generate more eyeballs for dealers and therefore more inquiries.
‘We actually have the opposite problem. We’ve lots of eyeballs and lots of traffic on the platform, but we have a relatively early product on the used side.
‘That’s the thing that we’re desperately trying to fix and is somewhat different to the other players in the market, that perhaps have a more mature product.
‘Hopefully over the course of 2026, you will see our product on the used side evolving at a really rapid pace.’
The Car Dealer Podcast, sponsored by Auto Trader, sees an industry guest join our hosts to discuss the motor trade’s biggest headlines of every week.
A full list of the stories discussed can be found here.
You can listen to all episodes of the Car Dealer Podcast on Spotify, or watch them in full on our YouTube channel.
