Used Car Awards nominations close today – here’s why I think you should get involved

One minute there’s the elation of selling your longest car in stock to a random walk-on on a wet Wednesday morning, to only be sunk by the catastrophic feeling of dread when the phone rings from a customer that picked up their car yesterday… it’s never good news, is it?

Those peaks and troughs are enough to get the heart murmuring and I’ve found dealing with it all incredibly hard work.

I’ve written before about customers’ expectations too and how difficult they can be to manage when you’re selling 10-year-old used cars. We work incredibly hard to keep customers happy and try our very best to ensure cars go out fault free. But these are used products and they’re not always perfect.

Sadly, you simply don’t know what’s going to happen 10 miles down the road, no matter how much you test drive a car before selling it.

What’s important is how you look after your customers when things do go wrong. And that’s the stressful bit – the warranty claims, the dealing with rightly frustrated buyers who just want a working car. The calls can come at any time of the day or night and as a used car dealer who cares about their business, you rightly get stuck in whenever it’s needed.

That’s why our Used Car Awards are important. They’re designed to shine a light on dealers like you that are going the extra mile to help customers out. This is an incredibly tough business to excel at so those that manage to survive and thrive deserve recognition.

Our Used Car Awards take place on November 30 but nominations close at 5pm TODAY.

I know how hard it is to take five minutes for yourself, let alone fill in an online form – but we’ve tried to make it as easy as possible.

Simply follow this link and enter your business details in any of the 24 categories you think you should be in. There’s no limit to the number of categories you can enter and then you’re in the mix for our judges to assess your business.

The awards ceremony – hosted by TV’s Mike Brewer – is a fantastic affair. Held at The Brewery in central London it’s a wonderful way to celebrate the end of the year with your team and gain some recognition for your hard work.

The Used Car Awards, sponsored by Black Horse, are now in their 15th year and you’ll see the award winners’ logos across adverts and car dealer websites up and down the country. Our winners are rightly proud of their recognition.

There are categories for franchised dealers, used car specialists, supermarkets and personal categories for members of your team. The most fiercely fought, though, are always the Customer Care categories and this year we’ve split those up into four so dealers of different sizes can be rewarded for their hard work.

Once your name is in the mix the judging process begins. It starts with an online review of your business and reviews and if you make the cut in your category you’ll make it on to our Nominations List. These are the firms that have made it through the first round of judging.

After that the real hard work begins with our mystery shopping programme. We’ll contact every one of the dealers on the list – be that via an online enquiry, a phone call or a visit in person – and we’ll benchmark you against your peers in that category.

It’s only when we’ve taken all this into account, and the opinions of our judging panel that includes our editorial team and Brewer, that we are ready to name our winners on a very special night in London.

So, when there’s chaos all around you today after a busy weekend of sales and warranty claims, put the phone on DnD for a few minutes, pour yourself a coffee and take two minutes to get your name in the frame for our Used Car Awards 2026.

You’ll never know if your used car business is one of the best without putting your details forward and the old saying is true: You’ve got to be in it, to win it.

I look forward to seeing our lucky finalists on the night for a Christmas party to remember.

James Baggott

Editor-in-chief, Car Dealer Magazine