Car Dealer Live

Christmas Car Dealer Live catch up – here are the special videos you might have missed

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Time 11:47 am, December 24, 2020

Car Dealer Live has kept us busy – and you entertained – in 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic gripped the motoring industry.

The launch of our series of video interviews has seen us chat to a huge number of motor trade professionals from car dealer group CEOs to those running used car businesses and more.

While the majority of the Car Dealer Live series (all of which you can catch up with here) has been recorded on Zoom, as our team and the motor industry were locked down, we have managed to get out and about a few times to visit some car dealer businesses.


For the Christmas break, we’ve taken a look back at some of our highlights that you may have missed this year.

Behind the scenes at Carzam

Peter Waddell and industry investor John Bailey have been carefully planning the launch of online used car business Carzam for months.

In the summer, Waddell invited Car Dealer Magazine to visit his home and preparation centre – and picked us up in his very own helicopter.


The visit opened our eyes to the huge scale of the preparation his firm was putting in to Carzam and convinced us that these motor trade professionals would be able to use their extensive experience to make online used car sales a success.

Inside supercar dealer Tom Hartley’s estate

One of our most popular Car Dealer Lives of the year was our visit to supercar dealer Tom Hartley’s estate.

Famous for the lake that he drives cars onto for photographs, the workaholic car dealer gave us a tour of his business and showed off the incredible cars he has in stock. 

Hartley has invested £10m in a new showroom on the family estate and in this Car Dealer Live he walks us around it and shows off his million pound motors.

Crazy used car prices

One of the plus points of a difficult 2020 has been the boom in used car prices – with some cars having risen by as much as 20 per cent over the year.

As this phenomenon began after the first lockdown, Snows Motor Group invited us into their dealership to watch one of their part exchange sales with BCA take place online.

We looked on as some of the cars sold for far in excess of their estimated values as buyers across the country snapped up stock to fuel a boom in demand.

What’s happening in used car dealers

While used car prices were soaring, dealerships were seeing demand increase at the coal face as many customers who had saved cash from not going on holiday splashed out on new wheels instead.

We headed to Big Motoring World’s new Enfield car supermarket to see what was happening in showrooms as customers flocked to buy used models to avoid public transport and cheer themselves up.


Online car sales – are they the future?

The other big talking point of 2020 was the shift to online car sales. During the national lockdowns car dealers could only sell remotely and offer click and collect or home deliveries to customers.

While many scrambled to implement digital sales solutions to their websites, there were some who had been doing it for years – like Andy Alderson and his Vanarama business.

Despite the name, the leasing firm had been busy selling cars and vans online for years and in this video he showed me how he’s made it a success.

The best car manufacturers and suppliers

We’ve all had to do things differently this year – including here are Car Dealer.

Not only have we stopped producing a physical magazine for the first time in more than a decade, switching everything to digital, but our famous events have had to change too.

Our Car Dealer Power Awards celebrate the best manufacturers to represent and the best suppliers to do business with – and this year we marked their success with a special video. In this Car Dealer Live you can find out who the best manufacturers are to work with – and the worst…

Physical or online used car sales?

And finally, our most recent Car Dealer Live saw us take a trip up to Nottingham a few days after the end of the second national lockdown to visit Carshop’s latest dealership.

There we met CEO Nigel Hurley who took us on a tour of the impressive new facility and explained why Carshop aren’t jumping into the digital used car sales game with two feet just yet. 


We hope you’ve enjoyed our new Car Dealer Live series this year. We already have some great visits lined up for the New Year (if we’re allowed, of course) and if you’d like us to come and see you and have an interesting story to tell, please get in touch via the About Us page here.

For more Car Dealer Lives, click here. 

James Baggott's avatar

James is the founder and editor-in-chief of Car Dealer Magazine, and CEO of parent company Baize Group. James has been a motoring journalist for more than 20 years writing about cars and the car industry.



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