elmo Drive wound downelmo Drive wound down

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Constellation-owned car subscription service Elmo Drive is wound down

  • Mystery surrounds demise of car subscription service
  • Elmo Drive had been going for five years
  • Latest available accounts show it made £16.5m loss in its 2022-23 financial year
  • Last November it carried out a defleeting exercise to raise money
  • It said it didn’t plan to get any more vehicles over the following two quarters

Time 4:04 pm, April 9, 2024

The Constellation Automotive Group-owned car subscription service Elmo Drive has been wound down.

Visitors to its website are greeting with the message above, with customers being pointed in the direction of an email address.

It isn’t yet known why it has been wound down, and Car Dealer has approached Constellation and Elmo Drive for a comment.


Last November, when customers found there were no cars available, head of operations Billy Haslam told car subscriptions comparison website car-subscriptions.co.uk: ‘We currently are undergoing a defleeting exercise in order to raise cash, so we’re having to recall vehicles from customers to then defleet.

‘We don’t have any replacement vehicles and there are no plans to get any more in the next two quarters.’

Elmo Drive was incorporated in March 2019 and its latest available accounts – for the year ended April 2, 2023 – show that it made a loss of £16.5m versus £1m the year before, which was a seven-month trading period.


According to Companies House, director Gregory Taylor resigned on March 27 this year.

Constellation also owns Cinch, WeBuyAnyCar.com, Marshall and BCA.

The demise of Elmo Drive sees it following in the footsteps of Onto last year and Drover, the latter of which was bought by Cazoo in December 2020, with Cazoo subsequently scrapping the subscription service last year.

John Bowman's avatar

John has been with Car Dealer since 2013 after spending 25 years in the newspaper industry as a reporter then a sub-editor/assistant chief sub-editor on regional and national titles. John is chief sub-editor in the editorial department, working on Car Dealer, as well as handling social media.



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