11:11 am, September 11, 2020
Imperial Cars has now made hundreds of employees redundant in a wide range of customer-facing roles, as the group announces it will ‘no longer be selling cars’
Having announced consultations with staff in July, employees of Imperial Cars reported yesterday on social media that hundreds had now been told their jobs have been made redundant.
The used car supermarket group was bought by Cazoo two weeks before the redundancy consultations were announced earlier in July.
Meanwhile, Imperial Cars announced on their Facebook page they have stopped selling cars since the Cazoo acquisition.
The post reads: ‘Due to the recent acquisition by Cazoo of Imperial Cars, we have now stopped selling cars.
‘The team is still here to help if you have any questions about a car you’re due to collect or if you have a query about an existing car.’
The Imperial Cars website has also been removed and now redirects automatically to Cazoo’s own website.
Since the acquisition, it has been revealed that Cazoo has been rebranding Imperial Cars sites and a previous Swansway Honda dealership as new customer centres.
The group operated across 18 sites in the UK, with one employee posting online that ‘hundreds of Imperial Cars staff are being made redundant’ and recommended that any general manager or dealer principal looking for staff should consider them.
The roles that had been made redundant included sales managers, sales controllers, business managers and sales advisers from sites in Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Exeter, Fleet, Grangemouth, Halesowen, Ipswich, Mountsorrel, Newport Pagnell, Swanwick, Tamworth and Wembley.
When the redundancies were first revealed, our source said: ‘They are axing most sales roles from the sites and customers will be taken care of by sales staff based centrally with customers talking to them via Zoom.
‘It’s a huge blow to staff. They are telling us this was going to happen with or without Cazoo but not many of us believe that.’
It was since revealed to Car Dealer that Cazoo is looking for 16 more sites to transform into these customer centres, where buyers will be able to view and collect their car but won’t be able to buy them.
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