10:21 am, January 12, 2026
Car dealer Tim Atkinson says his fight against Auto Trader is being fuelled by a ‘very profound sense of right and wrong’.
The Sports and Touring boss is currently working to put a case against the listings giant before the Competition and Markets Authority, having repeatedly accused the firm of running a ‘monopoly’.
It is a battle which he is hoping to undertake via a new trade body representing independent motor retailers, which he is currently in the process of setting up.
To discuss that venture, as well as his unconventional route to the motor trade after decades in the aviation industry, Atkinson joined us on the most recent episode of the Car Dealer Podcast.
In a lengthy chat with hosts James Baggott and Jon Reay, talk soon turned to Auto Trader and Atkinson was forthright in his continued criticism of the outfit.
He told Car Dealer: ‘I have a very profound sense of right and wrong and from my first engagement with Auto Trader, it felt wrong.
‘I got to know their corporate psychology, their modus operandi and so forth and it was quite familiar actually.
‘It was something I’d seen before when I was accident investigating. When you’re dealing with something like the Air France crash for example, it doesn’t all happen in the flight deck of the aircraft.
‘It reaches back into the design of the aircraft and the design philosophy in Toulouse at Airbus. It reaches back into the boardroom at Air France and decisions made there about pilot training and recruitment and operating principles and so forth.
‘I had seen a certain kind of corporate psychology, which is around a perceived excellence, which actually is entirely false.
‘Auto Trader think that they are just fabulously brilliant at everything they do, to the point that they’re in a real emperor’s new clothes situation, where they can’t even begin to think of the possibility of a question being asked about their brilliance having any validity.’
‘You should be able to use Auto Trader on reasonable terms’
Despite his criticism, Atkinson says he continues to advertise with Auto Trader, although he has stripped his package back over recent years.
He says that this is because the firm remains ‘without doubt the largest marketplace’ and that leaving altogether would be akin to shooting himself in the foot.
However, he did hit out at the firm’s ‘unreasonable’ terms and said that Deal Builder had been the straw that broke the camel’s back.
The 58-year-old added: ‘My buyer is between 50 and 70 years old, is white, middle class British and on the occasions when we get someone who isn’t, it’s an absolute delight.
‘We know that granularity and we know that to them, the place you go and buy a used car is Auto Trader. That’s why when this thing kicked off, my position was, and will continue to be, that we should be able as an industry to lean on Auto Trader.
‘They’ve built an enormous presence as a marketplace. They are without doubt the largest marketplace.
‘They have a monopoly but we are lucky enough to live in a country which has quite clear and quite stringent laws about how you must behave if you have a monopoly and Auto Trader are just ignoring them.
‘There was quite a body of opinion towards “Well, we’ll just cancel our subscription with Auto Trader”. That’s great – You put a fresh clip in, you take the safety off, put it on full auto, aim at your feet and hold the trigger.
‘All you’ve done is deprive yourself of talking to 80% perhaps of your audience. I was about saying: “No, that’s not right. You shouldn’t be bullied into that position, even if it’s for good reasons.”
‘You should be able to use Auto Trader, but you should be able to use Auto Trader on reasonable terms and it’s very clear that their terms aren’t reasonable.
‘They then of course, introduced Deal Builder, which was the final straw and all of a sudden the camel is just lying there in the desert with its back broken.
‘I’m actually glad they did that with Deal Builder because we needed someone to strike a match.’
The Car Dealer Podcast sees an industry guest join our hosts to discuss the motor trade’s biggest headlines of every week.
Auto Trader boss Nathan Coe previously appeared on the show to address the Deal Builder backlash, when he issued an apology for moving too quickly on the product’s roll-out.
He will be returning for another appearance in the coming weeks.
You can listen to all episodes of the Car Dealer Podcast on Spotify, or watch them in full on our YouTube channel.
