4:42 pm, December 11, 2023
Marshall has sold its Volkswagen showroom in Tunbridge Wells – another casualty of the takeover by Constellation Automotive Group.
The site in Dowding Way has been bought by the JCB Group family business and will now be called JCB Volkswagen Tunbridge Wells.
It follows Marshall losing all its Toyota and Lexus sites in July, after we exclusively revealed at the beginning of the year that Constellation had apparently forced Marshall to put them up for sale.
Also in the summer, customers of Marshall’s Welwyn Garden City Volvo dealer were told via email that from July 1 its new car sales would cease, with it planning to continue as a used car site and official Volvo repair centre.
Constellation took Marshall off the stock market after buying it last year in a £325m takeover, which was announced in November 2021.
At the end of last month, we told how a leaked memo revealed that senior directors Jamie Crowther and Jon Head had decided to leave Marshall Motor Group.
Former CEO Daksh Gupta left in May 2022, CFO Richard Blumberger in December and group counsel Stephen Jones in March this year.
HR director Joanne Moxon also stepped down as a director on June 30. A notice on Companies House said she’d ‘resigned’.
Commenting on the VW site acquisition, JCB Group owner and MD Jonathan Bischoff said: ‘We are looking forward to welcoming the staff of Volkswagen Tunbridge Wells into the JCB Group family.
‘Our customer-first ethos will hopefully please existing and future customers of the branch and we hope the business will build from strength to strength offering our customers the best choice locally.
‘We value our staff’s input and enthusiasm to be the best in the business. We are looking forward to having a presence in this lovely part of the county of Kent.’
Car Dealer has asked Constellation for a comment.
Pictured at top via Google Street View in September 2023 is the Marshall VW site in Tunbridge Wells that is now owned by the JCB Group
