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Review of 2010: A Year in Features

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Time 5:39 am, December 30, 2010

rtoty8WE take a festive five minute break by looking back at some of our best feature issues in 2010.

You could say 2010 has been Car Dealer’s best year for features – and we think you’d be right.

April’s Issue 25 saw Car Dealer Power launched which allowed dealers to say what they really thought of their manufacturers, while 2010 also saw Car Dealer Ewards turn three; cementing its position in the trade as the coveted web accolades.


Meanwhile, on the charity front, our famous Bangers4BEN was joined by 911for2011 – our attempt to turn £0 into a Porsche 911 to raise money for the automotive charity BEN. We also brought you road tests of 2010’s most exciting cars, and profiled the best companies that could help you financially. In essence, we enjoyed 2010 and we hope you had fun too.

Here we celebrate our best features of 2010… WARNING: Contains mild arrogance.

cardealeriss24cover

ISSUE 24  – MARCH


THERE’S nothing like ending with a bang is there? To mark the end of scrappage we managed to get hold of a car that quickly became the symbol of the scrappage scheme – Hyundai’s i10 – then stripped it out, and then strapped editor James into the driver’s seat.

To put it nicely, James survived. To put it correctly, James crashed out and was injured rather badly. And that wasn’t mentioning the i10. After being ganged up on by the other bangers, the i10 avec James was punted into the wall dazing Baggott and killing the Hyundai.

But both are now okay. Issue 24 also saw us chatting to Mazda’s UK chief Jeremy Thomson, and a road-test of Citroen’s anti-retro DS3. We also profiled the best companies that could help you out after the scrappge scheme.

ISSUE 26 – MAY

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THEY say that the best way to get to know a car is to spend time with it. That’s exactly what we did in Issue 26 for we spent 24 hours living and sleeping in one, but it wasn’t any normal car… oh no… it was a Rolls-Royce. Costing just under £200k the new Ghost is the price of a house, so could you spend 24 hours living in it?

But there was also a more important point to the 24 hour camp-out in the Roller, namely handing out Car Dealer Exclusive – a special A5 booklet packed with offers and one-off features that’s only available to our subscribers – to dealers along the way.

Suffice it to say the verdict was that you couldn’t sell the house to buy a Ghost to live in, but Issue 26 also saw JCT600 chief John Tordoff interviewed, and we profiled the worst car PR disasters ever. Porsche’s latest Boxster Spyder, the new Jag XJ, the Alfa Romeo MiTO MultiAir Cloverleaf, Seat Ibiza DR TDI, and Skoda’s huge Superb Estate were all road-tested, and we also asked a host of recruitment specialists their favourite interview questions and why you should be asking them.

cardealercover29ISSUE 29 – AUGUST

THIS issue will go down as one of the very best at Car Dealer for one simple reason. Somehow editor James managed to get the opportunity to drive the snarling 552bhp, V10-engined Lexus LFA at the Goodwood Festival of Speed. There was only one car in Europe, it cost £330k, and Lexus had trusted this car in his hands.


Thankfully all was well and he survived – you can read about his blast here, but that wasn’t all in Issue 29. Saab’s new 9-5, the Porsche Cayenne Hybrid S, Suzuki Swift, and Audi’s A1 were road-tested, and we spoke to Vertu’s CEO Robert Forrester. We also bagged our second purchase for 911for2011 in the form of a 2002 Ford Fiesta, buying it for £985.25 and selling it for £2,150. That was, as they say, a ‘result!’

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cardealercover30ISSUE 30 – SEPTEMBER

WHEN Issue 30 landed on your desks you would have been greeted by a most unusual cover car. No it wasn’t the result of too many Stellas the night before, but it was an otherwise ordinary Hyundai i10 covered in faux grass with a net and a football on its roof.

September’s issue saw Hyundai pitching (sorry!) in with an i10 football car specially made for the 2010 World Cup to help us in our 911for2011 challenge.

It was so attention grabbing in fact that it made headline news in France, Italy, New Zealand and the USA. It even appeared on the local BBC News. This helped the i10 sell for £5,005 returning a healthy £3,005 profit; £500 of which was thrown into the next project – three ex-press fleet Mazda MX-5s. The month also saw us chatting to Peugeot UK MD Jon Goodman and road-testing Fiat’s latest Abarth 500 and the new Kia Sportage.

picture1ISSUE 31 – OCTOBER

ISSUE 31 was where we could let our hair down and revel in our passion for cars. Road Test of the Year is our opportunity to pitch the year’s most exciting cars head to head to find out which is best; and RTOTY’10 lived up to expectations.

On some of North Wales’ most challenging roads we had Audi’s latest 5.2-litre V10 R8 Spyder, Porsche’s controversially styled Boxster Spyder, Aston’s four-door Rapide, RenaultSport’s dark horse Megane 250 Cup, and, proving that style doesn’t have to cost the Earth, Peugeot’s stunning RCZ.

Apart from the frolics in Wales, Issue 31 also saw Chevrolet boss Mark Terry chatting to us, and an exclusive interview with Hendy Group’s MD Paul Hendy about the 112-year-old-family business. We also showcased the cars and the companies which help saw-in the 60-reg plate change, and Mini’s new Countryman was road-tested too.

picture2ISSUE 32 – NOVEMBER

MONACO. The home of the Grand Prix, the rich and famous, the casino, the Monte Carlo Rally, and now the finishing point of Car Dealer’s Bangers4BEN 2010. Yes, that’s right, the principality of Monaco was the destination for Bangers4BEN 3 in which teams had to enter a banger costing no more than £500 with prizes for the best cars and costumes.

Participants had to travel from England to Monaco and back again, before their cars were sold at BCA Blackbushe with all the money going the automotive charity BEN. 2010 was, without doubt, the most ambitious and exciting B4B ever.

More than £13k was raised for BEN and the stakes for B4B 2011 have been raised even higher. Meanwhile, Issue 32 saw us quizzing the industry’s top names on how hard they thought Q4 would be, the Paris Motor Show round-up, Ford’s latest C-Max given the Car Dealer road-test treatment, and our special guide to how dealers could save money.

picture3ISSUE 33 – DECEMBER

DECEMBER 2010’s issue was special on a number of levels. Not only was it our biggest ever issue, but we also took the opportunity to celebrate Seat being 25 years old in the UK.

Back in 1985 the Spanish maker landed on our shores to tempt Brits from their provincial Fiestas into the eccentricities of Spanish ownership. 25 years on Seat is now the sporty sub-brand of the huge Volkswagen Group, and to celebrate this landmark we jumped into the car that set the ball rolling – the Mk1 Ibiza – and the firm’s very latest Ibiza Bocanegra, and visited the oldest and newest Seat dealers in the UK.

Ken Lister of Castlegate Seat in Norwich provided the tales of selling Seats a quarter of a century ago, while Katie Freeman of Horton, Lincoln told us were the firm is heading in the future. We also revealed the winners of our coveted gongs in our Ewards 2010, the story of of one our MX-5s selling through the power of social media, and we introduced the 11 firms that would help you make more money in 2011.

Car Dealer Club – if you haven’t already why not join Car Dealer Club for just £25? You get a subscription to Car Dealer Magazine so you can read these brilliant features every month, as well as access to free legal advice worth £199!

James Batchelor's avatar

James – or Batch as he’s known – started at Car Dealer in 2010, first as the work experience boy, eventually becoming editor in 2013. He worked for Auto Express as editor-at-large and was the face of Carbuyer’s YouTube reviews. In 2020, he went freelance and now writes for a number of national titles and contributes regularly to Car Dealer. In October 2021 he became Car Dealer's associate editor.



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