Podcast

‘I went from an investment bank to a family-run car dealership and regret not doing it sooner’

  • Infinity Motors, Sohib Ghafouri, appears on the latest episode of the Car Dealer podcast
  • Used car boss tells us about his unique journey to the motor trade and his plans for the future
  • He joins hosts Jon Reay and James Batchelor to discuss the biggest headlines of the week

Time 10:30 am, April 8, 2024

A used car dealer has explained how he went from working for an investment bank in Canary Wharf to being the boss of his very own family-run used car dealership.

Sohib Ghafouri is a civil engineer by trade and by the time the pandemic hit in 2020, he was working for banking giant JP Morgan in the heart of London’s financial district.

However, the 32-year-old had a long-standing passion for cars which was always bubbling away under the surface.


After being instructed to work from home during the first national lockdown, Ghafouri registered with Auto Trader and began buying and selling cars in a more serious way.

It was a move which saw him well and truly catch the motor trade bug and within six months of returning to the office, he had quit his job to commit fully to selling used cars.

He is now heading up the family-run Infinity Motors, which stocks around 140 used cars from a state-of-the-art site in Swindon, Wilts.


The business specialises in German vehicles and Ghafouri says his only regret is not changing careers sooner.

Appearing on the latest episode of the Car Dealer Podcast, sponsored by JATO, he told hosts Jon Reay and James Batchelor: ‘My background is actually in construction and I’m a civil engineer by profession. I was a civil engineer turned project manager but cars has always been my passion.

‘I’ve always been in and out of buying and selling – wheeler dealing as they call it – all the way from university up until about three years ago when I went full-time.

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‘It started off as a hobby, you buy your nice cars and then you drive them for a few months to a year and then sell on, and then what happened was Covid hit.

‘At the time I was still with my previous employer – JP Morgan in Canary Wharf – and they said everyone had to work from home. Initially it was for a defined period, I think of around three or four months, but as we got to the end of that they said “actually, it seems like this is not going to go away any time soon.”

‘That’s when I signed a contract with Auto Trader. I think it was about six cars or so and it just kicked off from there really.’

He added: ‘It was good for me to get full, hands-on experience of running my own mini dealership and I saw the benefits of it, the economics behind it and how it could work.

‘It was a short stint that only carried on for about four months and then they called us back into the office as things started to pick up again at work but that was something that I looked upon very fondly.

‘I thought “that’s my passion and I’m quite interested in cars” and looked at it as a hobby but then I thought “maybe we could turn this into a venture”.


‘I went back to work for about six or seven months and that’s when I decided to make a decision to give it a go, start up, go full-time and see where it goes.

‘If it fails, I’ve got my experience in my professional work, I can go back to that. The offer was always there from my previous employer.

‘Since then, I’ve not looked back and in some ways I regret not doing it sooner. It’s been absolutely great.’

The Car Dealer Podcast sees an industry guest join our hosts to discuss the motor trade’s biggest headlines of every week.

Among the topics up for discussion in the latest episode were Tom Hartley’s underpantsAutoNation eyeing Inchcape and EV incentives.

You can read all the stories discussed in this week’s podcast here:

 

You can listen to all episodes of the Car Dealer Podcast on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Jack Williams's avatar

Jack joined the Car Dealer team in 2021 as a staff writer. He previously worked as a national newspaper journalist for BNPS Press Agency. He has provided news and motoring stories for a number of national publications including The Sun, The Times and The Daily Mirror.



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